Bill Ayers speaks out! An In These Times exclusive.

The Populist Uprising

By David Sirota

American history is the history of populist uprisings. From the Revolutionary War to the coalfield wars, from labor organizers to anti-tax crusaders, from the New Deal to the current conservative era, backlashes to the status quo have defined every major political era. These uprisings have given us candidates from Goldwater to Dean, and presidents from Roosevelt to Reagan — and… return to article

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    What you state as “...the real problem for a conservative movement” is not a strictly conservative vice.

    What we refer to as our “representatives” are far too often merely the face before the camera. Legislation is written by lobbyists for their special interest employers. 

    The overwhelming size and number of bills written is sufficient to ensure that anyone who may try to responsibly legislate will be totally frustrated and in a short time fall into line. The “faces” are kept busy busy on their full-time reelection campaigns and soon become subsidized by corporate America.

    NAFTA, regardless of any recent campaign pretensions, was a joint Executive, Legislative and Corporate operation.

    The whole globalization, free enterprise, free market pitch was aimed at filling the pockets of CEOs and big shareholders.

    Options (money belonging to shareholders) are lavished on management and board members (charged with shareholder interests oversight) and congress has passed nice sounding legislation (The 2004 Jobs Creation Act) to provide corporate tax breaks. It has no provision that those jobs be in the US.

    Since we have the same signs before us that were there in the late 1970s: an economic emergency, a financial meltdown, an energy crisis and a national security quagmire… it is readily apparent that “uprising” was an illusion. (Oh, and once again the bill for all this is being sent to the taxpayer.)

    To believe this is the handiwork solely of conservatives…
    is to replace disillusionment with RE-illusionment.

    United States Posted by whattheheck on Jun 8, 2008 at 7:37 AM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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