Time for progressive Democrats to make their moves

1. Full Steam Ahead -- by Katrina vanden Heuvel/ The Nation

Representatives Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey – co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus – aren't concerned about the close-to-conventional wisdom that conservative and Blue Dog Democrats will dominate the next Congress.

The CPC – already the largest caucus in Congress with 64 members – is expected to add at least seven new Democrats after this election. (Eight of the twelve candidates who received campaign support from caucus members won their races, including: Jerry McNerney (CA); Phil Hare (IL); Keith Ellison (MN); Bruce Braley (IA); John Hall (NY); Mazie Hirono (HI); Gabrielle Giffords (AZ); and Julia Carson (IN).) The CPC will now be represented in the Senate, too, where Senator-elect Bernie Sanders has pledged to remain a member and help recruit his new colleagues, and Sherrod Brown is expected to do the same.

Most significantly, the CPC's pressing issues are in sync with the American public's interests and desires. "We represent the real democratic values of our party," Woolsey says.

"We are a big tent party, but it was the war and economic issues that won this election," says Lee. "CPC members were the ones who didn't vote for the war in Iraq; and CPC members were the ones who called for an end to the Iraq War. And as far as the economy goes, proposals like raising the minimum wage are part of the progressive agenda."

Woolsey believes that the diversity of ideas within the party represents an opportunity. "Our party can prove to the nation that we represent all Americans – not just a slice of America. But our role is clear: if we sat quietly and let moderate Democrats become the left edge, then right-wingers would sail….They wouldn't look so right-wingy anymore!"

The Caucus has a clear vision for the upcoming Congress. It will support former-CPC member and Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi on her First 100 Hours and Six for '06 initiatives. But both Lee and Woolsey say that the CPC is focused on going "beyond that." They point to the caucus' Progressive Promise which outlines its goals in the areas of economic security, civil rights and liberties, global peace and security, and environmental protection and energy independence.

"We have to keep our promise to the American people by passing our Progressive Promise," Lee says.

Among other legislation, Woolsey looks forward to the CPC's unveiling of its "Peace and Security" budget this Spring. It will show "what a budget would look like if we invested in peace." She points to addressing the Patriot Act and Homeland Security ("make our nation more secure but not by taking away our rights"); making elections genuinely secure ("we as Democrats didn't do enough about that in the past two years"); taking on media control ("the FCC needs to know that we need more than a few corporations controlling the media"); and taking real steps to free the nation from dependence on foreign oil.

And, of course, responding to the crisis in Iraq.

Lee says the CPC will work to ensure that the Democratic Caucus as a whole embraces ending the war. It will work with its "millions of supporters," using the same "inside-outside strategy" that led to so many critical victories on Election Day. Many members will march with supporters and do all they can to expose the cost and devastation of the war and occupation. Meanwhile, the Out of Iraq Caucus – chaired by Rep. Maxine Waters and co-founded by Lee and Woolsey, among others – will present clear alternatives to the Administration's policy.

Lee makes it clear that it was the Bush Administration that "got us into this mess. And its going to have to get us out. But we'll come up with our specific proposals--including diplomacy with Syria and Iran."

The CPC will also maintain its laser-like focus on reducing poverty, which Lee notes isn't just an urban problem but impacts rural communities too.

With at least 10 CPC members expected to chair committees, and 35 members chairing subcommittees, both Lee and Woolsey are confident that the caucus' ideas and vision will inform the Democrats' approach on issues across the board.

"We'll be a steady and firm part of the debate," Woolsey says. "We'll get our amendments introduced. We'll have a voice."

Lee points to the critical role of witnesses in hearings. "We'll get a chance to call our witnesses," she says. "New ideas will be brought before the committees. Listening to people and presenting new ideas – that's how you come up with good legislation. Speaking [as a Representative from California], we are going to call more African-American, Latino, and Asian Pacific Islander American witnesses. We're going to call on our best and brightest. Republicans didn't do that."

Hearings will also allow CPC members to do their job of oversight. "We had a Republican Congress of No Oversight," Woolsey says. "The American people have been left with blanks where there should be answers. How did we get into Iraq? Where did the Reconstruction money go? Why did Abu Ghraib happen? What went wrong during Katrina? We will investigate and we will get answers. [CPC member] John Conyers will chair the Judiciary Committee – what more can I say?"

Lee and Woolsey are both reflective about the disastrous period which has now – in part – ended, and the work that lies ahead.

"Our country was on the brink," Lee says. "Domestic surveillance, torture, suspension of the Geneva Conventions. Our fundamental notion of democracy was at risk. Now we've got to take our country back. We were close to losing it, now we have to restore our democracy."

"My message to my leadership is this: this country elected us to be bold," Woolsey says. "They didn't elect us to wait for James Baker to report. They said they trust Democrats to get us out of Iraq. And they didn't elect Democrats to simply be partners with President Bush – rather, the public told us to correct, challenge and confront the President. I believe in nothing but boldness from this point on."

"This is a defining moment and we can't lose it," Lee adds. "It's full steam ahead."


2. Send in the Subpoenas -- by Ron Suskind/The Washington Post

Senate Foreign Relations Committee aides debated last Tuesday whether to call deposed Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld to the hearing table for a public flogging. The decision was no - at least for now. Later that day, I bumped into the incoming committee chairman, presidential hopeful Joseph R. Biden Jr. He said that while there was "extraordinary malfeasance" born of the Iraq crisis, he was planning to stay clear of all that. "That's looking backward," he said. "I'm in the 'action plan' department."

Biden expressed concern about the inquisitorial zeal of some of his "friends in the House," stressing that the key for both chambers will be "attaching all investigations to the broadest public purpose."

The new Democratic Congress may well come down to a series of confrontations between the competing urges to investigate and to lead. Between delving into past wrongdoings and building consensus on how to proceed in Iraq. Between, in a sense, the Democratic Party's show horses and its pit bulls.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), the soon-to-be chairman of the Government Reform Committee, is a classic pit bull. He has dreamed of subpoenas - issuing them, and placing witnesses under oath - for 12 years. Biden, meanwhile, is an unabashed show horse. The Delaware Democrat has dreamed of the Oval Office even longer. Both must exist within the new, mandate-infused Democratic Congress, and must figure out a way to survive together.

It's not as easy as it may seem, especially for Democrats. They say they've learned from the long run of Republican rule, but their efforts to adopt the GOP playbook may propel them into an identity crisis. Republicans, after all, are all about hierarchy and top-down decision-making. If everyone on the field uses a different playbook, they like to say, then you lose.

Democrats should be able to both investigate and lead, but it will take an embrace of Republican-style discipline (hardly a Democratic strong suit), an appreciation for deferred gratification (think inauguration day, January 2009) and a shrewd division of labor between pit bulls and show horses.

Here, then, is a playbook for the Democrats - one that keeps the show horses preening, lets the pit bulls attack, helps the party figure out how to use its new subpoena power to maximum effect and encourages the sort of reality-based disclosures that all citizens, regardless of party, deserve.

First, the Democrats must broker a separation of powers. The show horses are their putative candidates for president, especially in the Senate, and the party's leadership in both chambers. Keep them above the fray, focusing on proposals for the future and the new "action plans," especially in foreign policy. But unleash the pit bulls: the committee chairs, their seconds and investigators who will dig relentlessly, identify targets and thus, inevitably, leave themselves vulnerable in their next reelection campaigns.

I've spent the past several years investigating various aspects of the Bush administration - including economic policy and the battle against terrorism - so I know there are so very many targets for the Democrats to choose from. However, there is not unlimited public patience for such efforts. The Democrats should therefore start with the freshest data: Exit polls from the midterm elections showed that concern about Iraq was matched by broader concerns about terrorism and, surprisingly, government corruption.

Indeed, the Bush administration's ability to remain scandal-free until last year's meltdown over lobbyist Jack Abramoff was, in large measure, a triumph of one-party rule over congressional oversight. While lobbyists for energy, health care and the automotive industry have walked through the Bush years in a state of near bliss, congressional watchdogs were defunded and career inspectors general of various departments were replaced by political appointees.

The vast U.S. energy industry may be the ripest target for a corruption investigation. When Vice President Cheney's energy task force was meeting in early 2001 - meetings whose secrecy Cheney has managed to protect against legal challenge - the goal of U.S. energy independence was barely an afterthought. Now, with the United States mired in the affairs of petro-dictatorships in the Middle East, even the president has emphasized the need to cure our addiction to oil.

Studied inaction on this front stems from the coziness between the administration and big oil - a relationship that affects the global warming debate, Iraq, gas prices and oil company profits. Investigations into that relationship are a sure win for the Democrats. Just lining up oil company executives under the hot lights - much like the seven tobacco company chief executives were lined up in 1994, looking like gray-suited deer - creates the image, if not necessarily the fact, of activist government. (Suggested witnesses: Lee Raymond, chief executive of Exxon Mobil until this year; Spencer Abraham, former energy secretary; Cheney; and David Addington, Cheney's deputy on many energy matters.)

While some inquests set the table for responsible policy - much as hearings on pollution helped spur 1990 amendments to the Clean Air Act - most are designed to strengthen accountability and deter future perfidy. The administration's repeated practice of strong-arming experts who stray off message makes for a bevy of high-intensity witnesses. They include global warming experts in various departments as well as Richard Foster, the Health and Human Services accountant who was threatened with dismissal for trying to alert Congress about the deceptive cost estimates on the Medicare prescription drug program. Hearings would show who gave the order to mislead the public on these issues of pressing concern - a proper investigation for any Congress. (Suggested witnesses: Tom Scully, Foster's boss; James Hansen of NASA; Rick Piltz, formerly of the U.S. Global Change Research Program; and former Environmental Protection Agency director Christine Todd Whitman.)

All this comes before the Democrats even get to Iraq and the manipulation of prewar intelligence, the botched postwar planning and the myriad mistakes made after the invasion.

Oddly, Iraq may be the last place that Democratic investigators want to go, precisely because it is the arena from which the party's key above-the-fray "action plan" must emerge. So much is known from this year's host of Iraq books and stream of media disclosures that hearings would mostly unearth common knowledge - a patience-trying prospect for a war-fatigued public.

Some Republicans would disagree. The goal of an investigation, and public hearings, they argue, is to destroy the targets. Ruin them, and whatever public purpose they champion is ruined as well. You have to make it personal. That's what people understand - and that's what will create a public "moment" at a hearing table, one that will echo forward, even if the events in question are long passed.

Over in the people's chamber, some House investigators are quite clear on how to make things personal: Force administration officials to say that they lied or to take the Fifth Amendment. Two areas of modest public purpose, but fierce public passions, are the rescue of Army Pfc. Jessica Lynch and the death of NFL star-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman. In both cases, government officials willfully distributed false information. To show how that sort of thing happens - who crafted and authorized the release - would lead to the question of whether the practice is part of approved policy, an issue that drives at the very character of this administration. (Suggested witnesses: Jim Wilkinson, deputy national security adviser from 2003 to 2005 and spinmeister for the Iraq war; Dan Bartlett, special assistant to Bush for communications; and Gen. John P. Abizaid, chief of the U.S. Central Command.)

Indeed, the results of the midterm elections suggest that people's eyes are adjusting to the Bush administration's message management innovations. Recent polls show that public concerns over how the government is handling the terrorism threat now surpass concerns over the handling of the Iraq war, which may mean that the administration's overall credibility problems are bleeding into what was once an area of relative strength for the president. Add the foiled terrorist attacks in London in August, and Americans can quite naturally be wondering what we're not being told on the terrorism front.

Unfortunately, as I've encountered repeatedly in my own reporting, discernible reality in the war on terrorism is mostly locked in a vault marked "classified." There is no realm in which more misinformation has been passed to the public, a result of the creative license that a largely secret war affords this - or any - government.

A mission of the Democratic Congress that would please both the gods of politics and of public purpose (they don't always intersect) may be to drag that war from the shadows. But it will be difficult. Though members of the Senate and House Intelligence Committees know from interrogation and wiretap scandals that they are ill-equipped to oversee such wide swaths of classified activities, the administration's position on keeping secrets secret is strong. Virtually no one now in the government advocates disclosure - the default setting is to classify everything.

Democratic-run congressional committees could push for some modicum of transparency in public hearings. Start with whether any Americans who are clearly uninvolved in terrorist activities have been, or are being, wiretapped. The list is long, and addressing it would encourage judicial oversight of that program - as well as various financial surveillance programs - rather than keeping it caught in partisan gridlock between executive and legislative branches. (Suggested witnesses: Michael V. Hayden, formerly National Security Agency director, now head of the CIA; Robert S. Mueller III, FBI director; and Charles T. Fote, former chief executive of First Data Corp.)

The list of areas crying out for inquiry is quite long as well. The "war on terror" is a vast undiscovered country. The erosion of global U.S. human intelligence assets since the start of the Iraq war, for example, is harrowing. The fraying threads of international cooperation (as anti-Americanism becomes a path to political success throughout the world) correspond to a dizzying growth of self-activated terrorist cells. And it gets worse. A September 2003 meeting of all pertinent top officials in government, including the president and vice president, discussed how suspected terrorists, identified by the CIA, were lost by the FBI once they entered the United States - even after the 9/11 attacks. The heated exchanges that day, and numerous similar ones over the past three years, suggest a breakdown in process that will surely be discussed by some commission after the next terrorist attack. (Suggested witnesses: Cheney, Mueller and FBI counterterrorism chief Phil Mudd, formerly at the CIA.)

And while all this proceeds, what about those show horses? Well, they'll steer clear of the hearings and, as one senator recently quipped, "stay away from past-tense words like 'woulda, coulda, or shoulda' " as they develop their action plans. But once the 2008 campaign season heats up, they'll choose among the coming year's subpoena fest for the sharpest disclosures, and wield them in electoral battle.

Or so the playbook reads.

(Ron Suskind is author of The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of its Enemies Since 9/11)


3. ELECTION 2006
Class Struggle
American workers have a chance to be heard.
BY JIM WEBB/Wall Street Journal

The most important--and unfortunately the least debated--issue in politics today is our society's steady drift toward a class-based system, the likes of which we have not seen since the 19th century. America's top tier has grown infinitely richer and more removed over the past 25 years. It is not unfair to say that they are literally living in a different country. Few among them send their children to public schools; fewer still send their loved ones to fight our wars. They own most of our stocks, making the stock market an unreliable indicator of the economic health of working people. The top 1% now takes in an astounding 16% of national income, up from 8% in 1980. The tax codes protect them, just as they protect corporate America, through a vast system of loopholes.

Incestuous corporate boards regularly approve compensation packages for chief executives and others that are out of logic's range. As this newspaper has reported, the average CEO of a sizeable corporation makes more than $10 million a year, while the minimum wage for workers amounts to about $10,000 a year, and has not been raised in nearly a decade. When I graduated from college in the 1960s, the average CEO made 20 times what the average worker made. Today, that CEO makes 400 times as much.

In the age of globalization and outsourcing, and with a vast underground labor pool from illegal immigration, the average American worker is seeing a different life and a troubling future. Trickle-down economics didn't happen. Despite the vaunted all-time highs of the stock market, wages and salaries are at all-time lows as a percentage of the national wealth. At the same time, medical costs have risen 73% in the last six years alone. Half of that increase comes from wage-earners' pockets rather than from insurance, and 47 million Americans have no medical insurance at all.

Manufacturing jobs are disappearing. Many earned pension programs have collapsed in the wake of corporate "reorganization." And workers' ability to negotiate their futures has been eviscerated by the twin threats of modern corporate America: If they complain too loudly, their jobs might either be outsourced overseas or given to illegal immigrants.

This ever-widening divide is too often ignored or downplayed by its beneficiaries. A sense of entitlement has set in among elites, bordering on hubris. When I raised this issue with corporate leaders during the recent political campaign, I was met repeatedly with denials, and, from some, an overt lack of concern for those who are falling behind. A troubling arrogance is in the air among the nation's most fortunate. Some shrug off large-scale economic and social dislocations as the inevitable byproducts of the "rough road of capitalism." Others claim that it's the fault of the worker or the public education system, that the average American is simply not up to the international challenge, that our education system fails us, or that our workers have become spoiled by old notions of corporate paternalism.

Still others have gone so far as to argue that these divisions are the natural results of a competitive society. Furthermore, an unspoken insinuation seems to be inundating our national debate: Certain immigrant groups have the "right genetics" and thus are natural entrants to the "overclass," while others, as well as those who come from stock that has been here for 200 years and have not made it to the top, simply don't possess the necessary attributes.

Most Americans reject such notions. But the true challenge is for everyone to understand that the current economic divisions in society are harmful to our future. It should be the first order of business for the new Congress to begin addressing these divisions, and to work to bring true fairness back to economic life. Workers already understand this, as they see stagnant wages and disappearing jobs.

America's elites need to understand this reality in terms of their own self-interest. A recent survey in the Economist warned that globalization was affecting the U.S. differently than other "First World" nations, and that white-collar jobs were in as much danger as the blue-collar positions which have thus far been ravaged by outsourcing and illegal immigration. That survey then warned that "unless a solution is found to sluggish real wages and rising inequality, there is a serious risk of a protectionist backlash" in America that would take us away from what they view to be the "biggest economic stimulus in world history."

More troubling is this: If it remains unchecked, this bifurcation of opportunities and advantages along class lines has the potential to bring a period of political unrest. Up to now, most American workers have simply been worried about their job prospects. Once they understand that there are (and were) clear alternatives to the policies that have dislocated careers and altered futures, they will demand more accountability from the leaders who have failed to protect their interests. The "Wal-Marting" of cheap consumer products brought in from places like China, and the easy money from low-interest home mortgage refinancing, have softened the blows in recent years. But the balance point is tipping in both cases, away from the consumer and away from our national interest.

The politics of the Karl Rove era were designed to distract and divide the very people who would ordinarily be rebelling against the deterioration of their way of life. Working Americans have been repeatedly seduced at the polls by emotional issues such as the predictable mantra of "God, guns, gays, abortion and the flag" while their way of life shifted ineluctably beneath their feet. But this election cycle showed an electorate that intends to hold government leaders accountable for allowing every American a fair opportunity to succeed.

With this new Congress, and heading into an important presidential election in 2008, American workers have a chance to be heard in ways that have eluded them for more than a decade. Nothing is more important for the health of our society than to grant them the validity of their concerns. And our government leaders have no greater duty than to confront the growing unfairness in this age of globalization.

(Mr. Webb is the Democratic senator-elect from Virginia.)


3. Here Come the Armani Democrats
America's Progressive Nightmare
By JOE MOWREY/Counterpunch

We are already beginning to see the results of the "blue wave" which occurred in our recent elections. Lobbyists are retooling to accommodate their favorite Democratic politicians. Harry Reid has promised to increase the military budget by $75 billion. Impeachment is "off the table," not to mention trials for war crimes. And Democrats have pledged to raise the minimum wage to a whopping $7.25 an hour. That's a total income of $15,080 a year, before taxes. Members of Congress will give themselves that much in automatic cost of living increases alone over the next five years. Let's face it, the power elite have successfully executed a changing of the guard.

The "progressive" community wasted the last two years and countless resources sponsoring corporate lackeys for election to a fascist system of government. (Fascism was originally defined by Benito Mussolini as a partnership between government and corporations.) Congratulations. There still is no serious anti-war or anti-militarism movement in this country. The corporatists won-peace and social justice lost, again. With progress like this, who needs habeas corpus?

As I did before this recent lemming vote-fest, I suggest we spit out the electronic pacifier of the masses and begin a program of vaccination for "chronic voter's syndrome." We should recognize the corrupt system of electoral madness for the farce that it is and implement a boycott of elections, local as well as national. As long as we agree to participate in an Alice-in-Wonderland system of governance we will continue to be ruled by corporations. We will continue to see unlimited manufacture and exportation of arms around the globe. We will continue to witness the wanton destruction of our planet by sociopaths in Armani suits with sound-bite smiles. (Yes, that was an Armani Nancy Pelosi was wearing at her first press conference following the election. No kidding.)

Whether for federal, state or local ballot items, which ad campaigns did you like the best? Did you vote for Captain Crunch or Count Chocula? How about that myriad of candidates' forums and policy discussions? Who could keep up with the avalanche of meaningful information we were given about these politicos and their agendas. It was tough deciding whether to vote for "a new direction" or "a positive change." There were so many clever and inspiring slogans, one was hard pressed to choose among them.

Some Democrats expressed their opposition to the war but don't hold your breath waiting for them to end it any time soon. While we're busy celebrating the ascension to power of the kinder, gentler fascists, innocent men, women and children continue to die at a rate of thousands per month in Iraq and Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan, don't you? That's the country we bombed the hell out of, then turned back over to drug lords. Most progressives seem to have forgotten that war. And do you seriously believe those fourteen permanent military bases we're building in Iraq are going to be abandoned any time soon? If so, then I've got a bridge in Baghdad I'd like to sell you. No matter which political party is in power, the United State's military industrial complex will remain the wellspring of death and destruction in the Middle East and around the world.

There is no one left to end this reign of terror but you and me. If we have any social conscience at all, we should quit participating in the shell game the criminal elite uses to manipulate our society, our country and the world. Change from within has become an absurd and impossible notion. The structure of government itself is the problem, not which collection of puppets pretends to maintain it. We must seize control, peacefully and nonviolently, of our governing institutions as well as the major corporate broadcast centers that hold our public airwaves hostage. We must organize caucuses nationwide and send delegates to a People's Congress in order to establish a new constitutional government. We must create truth commissions to allow the American people to come to grips with the fact that our culture and our nation, our "land of the free and home of the brave," born of one of the most brutal genocides in history, has been and continues to be a cancer on the world social and political order and the global environment.

There is no American dream, only a nightmare which the rest of the world is forced to endure while Americans remain steadfastly asleep in front of their televisions every evening soaking up the infotainment we call news. Or if you are a really wild and crazy liberal you listen to Air America Radio, the so-called new voice of "progressive" media, where people like Al Franken and Randi Rhodes prattle on about what a great president Bill Clinton was. They seem to have forgotten how he bombed Iraq continuously for his entire eight years in office, rammed NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement) down our throats, accelerated the consolidation of corporate media and used extraordinary rendition to send our "enemies" to countries around the world to be tortured. You didn't think Cheney and the boys came up with that one on their own, did you?

Though estimates vary, even conservative figures attribute the deaths of as many as 350,000 children to the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq during Mr. Clinton's "liberal" administration. These draconian measures were implemented under cover of the United Nations by such "progressive" war criminals as U.N Ambassador Madeleine Albright. Ms. Albright has a new book out in which she laments her blunder in answering yes to Leslie Stahl's question on 60 Minute s about whether the death of so many Iraqi children was worth it in order to punish Saddam Hussein. No mention of how wrong it was to actually enforce the programs that caused those deaths. Hey, she has a book to sell. No time for true confessions now.

Then there is Democrat Bill Richardson, one of Albright's successors as U.N. Ambassador, whose reward for continuing to withhold chlorine from water treatment facilities in Iraq was an appointment as Secretary of Energy. Oh, by the way, recently, he also answered yes to the infamous Madeleine Albright question. Now he is the much-touted "progressive" Governor of New Mexico, one of the countries largest repositories of nuclear weapons, home of the latest research into new and improved nuclear weapons technologies in direct violation of the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). New Mexico is drowning in defense-industry blood money while its residents ranked fifth highest in the nation for food insecurity in 2005. What a guy Bill Richardson is. He's my kind of liberal war criminal. He's also been shortlisted as a possible presidential candidate in the next electoral charade.

Meanwhile, back at the progressive-pundit ranch, even outspoken critics of the neoconservative status quo refuse to acknowledge the most pressing foreign policy issue of our time-Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank. Al Franken and the rest of the voices on Air America were outraged when Bush and company suspended habeas corpus through the Military Commissions Act. None of them seem to have noticed Israel's long-time policy of detaining Palestinians without trial or charge under its cleverly titled program of "Administrative Detention." They decry George Bush's policy of preemptive war while in the same breath parroting the Israel lobby's talking points about Israel's right to defend itself against those who would dare to resist the brutal invasions and occupations that are part and parcel of the Zionist tragedy unfolding for the last sixty years in "The Promised Land."

The idea of a Christian state is out of the question. An Islamic state-what, have you lost your mind? But progressives believe a Jewish state is to be promoted and defended at all costs. Apartheid was morally unacceptable in South Africa. But Israel's Apartheid Wall which imprisons Palestinians in bantustans throughout the West Bank is considered absolutely essential in order to provide 'security' for Israel's colonization of Palestine. The cluster bombs Israel dropped on civilian neighborhoods in the last days of their recent barbaric destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon aren't a topic of conversation on Air America Radio. Neither is the collective punishment and systematic starvation of one and half million civilians in the Gaza Strip. But what the heck, Al Franken is planning to run for the Senate in '08, and we're looking to put a Democrat in the White House next time around. Those AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbyists and their deep pockets are going to be indispensable.

It's time to snap out of our collective state of "liberal" denial and take to the streets, loudly and insistently, in numbers too large to be shot, arrested or ignored. No more platitudes about peace. No more lesser of two evils. No more staking out the middle ground. No more handshakes with war criminals. No more walls or weapons or wars of imperialist aggression. We need to declare our independence from the stultification of corporate hegemony. Though our forebears may not have been the most egalitarian crowd they at least had the courage and tenacity to take a stand against colonial tyranny and exploitation by the British East India Company. There's that familiar corporate element again. Funny how history repeats itself.

The Declaration of Independence, a celebrated manifesto for change, was a statement of unyielding principle, not a statement of compromise. We need to draft a new Declaration of Independence. We need to insist on basic principles of human rights and social justice as the foundation for whatever form of government we devise. We need to stand firmly and resolutely on these principles. This is perhaps our only hope of creating an atmosphere where peace, however you choose to define that word, has any chance of becoming even a vague reality in our time-before the end of our time.

Okay, so it won't be easy and it certainly won't be pretty. But I would rather plunge into the abyss of social and economic revolution than over the precipice to which corporate plutocracy has brought us. Are you looking forward to a Hillary Clinton/ Barack Obama ticket in 2008? How about the upcoming "surgical air strikes" against Iran, a plan which Mr. Obama has supported? Thank goodness Ms. Clinton has taken a firm stand against flag burning. How courageous of her. In addition, though she made a flamboyant speech on the floor of the Senate opposing torture, publicly she expressed her support for it-only as a last resort, of course. Ain't liberalism grand?

Preemptive war, colonization, collective punishment, torture, exploitation of labor, degradation of the environment-the list of progressive values goes on and on. I can hardly wait to vote for the Demicans again, or is it the Republicrats we should be supporting?

Those polar ice caps aren't going to stop melting anytime soon. We had all better start asking ourselves how long we think we can tread water. Time is in short supply. Hope and determination never are. To quote a marginally popular bumper sticker from the 60's, "Why vote? It only encourages them."

(Joe Mowrey is a peace and social justice activist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He can be contacted at jmowrey@ix.netcom.com. Among his other relentlessly futile endeavors, he is one of a small contingent of diehards who have maintained a presence at a major intersection in town every Friday for the last four years in opposition to the illegal and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. He also manages the database and produces the graphics for the Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Installation, a 450-foot-long [and growing] series of 3 by 6 foot vinyl banners displaying the names, faces and obituaries of the U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Installation is a project of the Santa Fe Chapter of Veterans for Peace.)