Don’t be evil is Google’s corporate motto, and a very good one. Google aspires to be a different kind of corporation, and it’s taking the heat for it. The Bush reich wants Google’s “honey pot” of high-quality, comprehensive information, and Wall Street wants to knock it down to size for thinking it can be different. It stumbled on predicted earnings this quarter and got a little taste. We’ll see how long they hold out on keeping their materials private. Sasa Zorovic, an analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. confidently predicts, “At some point Google will be humbled.”
And that’s what happens when you go public. Every time. Cause and effect. The market system is designed to produce a reliable result—profitability—every time, regardless of the human or environmental cost. There is no way to be a publicly traded corporation and remain free to be moral. Evil isn’t optional. (On the other hand, the truly evil, real black holes, are also privately held; I’m thinking Carlyle Group.)
The Democratic Party has undergone the same process. As Jeff Faux points out in his wonderfully lucid article in The Nation, “The Party of Davos,” under Bill Clinton, the Democratic Party slipped its New Deal moorings and became “the party of Davos,”—i.e., globalization. It explains so much that it’s worth quoting Faux at some length:
That the global economy is developing a global ruling class should come as no shock. All markets generate economic class differences. In stable, self-contained national economies, where capital and labor need each other, political bargaining produces a social contract that allows enough wealth to trickle down from the top to keep the majority loyal. . . .
But as domestic markets become global, investors increasingly find workers, customers and business partners almost anywhere. Not surprisingly, they have come to share more economic interests with their peers in other countries than with people who simply have the same nationality. They also share a common interest in escaping the restrictions of their domestic social contracts. . . .
[A]s Renato Ruggiero, the first director-general of the World Trade Organization, noted in a rare moment of candor, “We are no longer writing the rules of interaction among separate national economies. We are writing the constitution of a single global economy.” (Emphasis added.) . . .
It is therefore no surprise that the constitution of the world economy protects just one class of citizen—the corporate investor. . . .
. . . the model for this constitution is the North American Free Trade Agreement, conceived under Ronald Reagan, nurtured by George H. W. Bush and delivered by Bill Clinton. Among other things, NAFTA’s 1,000-plus pages give international investors extraordinary rights to override government protections of workers and the environment. It sets up secret panels, rife with conflicts of interest, to judge disputes from which there is no appeal. It makes virtually all nonmilitary government services subject to privatization and systematically undercuts the public sector’s ability to regulate business. . . .
It’s impossible to understand why Democratic Party leaders collaborated with Republicans to establish NAFTA unless reference is made to cross-border class interests. . . .
Clinton was more Davos than Democrat. Tutored by financier Robert Rubin . . . Clinton embraced a reactionary, pre-New Deal vision of a global future in which corporate investors were unregulated and the social contract was history. . . . “NAFTA happened,” said the then-chairman of American Express, “because of the drive Bill Clinton gave it. He stood up against his two prime constituencies, labor and environment, to drive it home over their dead bodies.”
We sold our soul to the devil. I say “we” because I was an enthusiastic Democrat then, and I went along with it. I believed in “winning in inches.” I have come to realize, after years of falling for Clinton the way some people fell for Reagan, that the Dems are there to manage the left, not represent it.
The DLC is also carefully managing the new left on campus. The result, according to one student activist: “The right actually ends up looking cooler than the left. I don’t know how this is possible, but it’s true!” I don’t know, could it possibly be because, “Some worry that the [student] organization, run in part by former Clinton administration officials, is more interested in promoting a centrist agenda than a strong, progressive alternative to the campus right.”
To those who argue that we have to concentrate on the elections in 2006, I would point out that Democrats won the last two presidential elections, and quite possibly the 2002 midterms as well—and they still lost! John Kerry capitulated quickly and graciously, following Gore’s example, not because he wanted to be thought of as a nice guy, but because it wouldn’t be good for business. Not allowed.
In a recent article, Bernard Weiner addressed the issue squarely: do we continue to pressure the Dems and work within, or start a new party? For my own part, I can no longer support the Democratic Party. I have no interest in a Vichy government. I don’t want to collaborate, but they obviously do, jumping up and applauding a dictator as he tells the nation during his State of the Union exactly why he’s had to set aside our laws and constitution.
We need a total change of paradigm. Nothing else will do. It seems to me the one platform that unites most Americans, and most citizens of the world, is a Green platform. While we are being manipulated by images and bloodlust illusions from the past, the future is evaporating. 2005 was the warmest year since records started being kept about a hundred years ago. Five of the warmest years on record occurred in the past decade.
Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at plgoldsmith@optonline.net.
This is just irresponsible. If the liberals split, we'll have ANOTHER Republican facist administration. That's how Gore lost in 2000, the liberals split the vote between the Green Party and the Democrats.
How GREEN do you think this country will be if we continue to have Republican after Republican administrations? Anyone who thinks they'll get a majority with an independent third party is in the same bubble with Bush. Stop whining and work for unity and solidarity!
by
terri Kionka (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 83 comments)
on Monday, February 6, 2006 at 9:38:03 PM
Hmmm.. unifying behind the party of Zell Miller, and the spineless drones that rise and applaud the War Criminal Bush every time he speaks? EVERY thing on Bush's agenda has been supported by Democrats. They voted for the war, remember? I prefer making a clear statement AGAINST complicity, thank you. The author of this article was dead on when she said the Democrats exist to manage the left... and the first responder to it showed her willingness to be managed by the Democrats by her reply.
by
Craig (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 1:08:55 PM
A little stroll down memory lane.
1992 after Clinton defeated the first Bush in a vote marked by a split of the right and a minority victory by Bill and Al.
A fellow activist and I were talking about what was ahead for the Democratic Party. He, being more visionary than I, predicted a split among the factions of the Right that would allow the Dems a chance to govern until a new Progressive majority could form around a progressive agenda.
Here we are with Bush II in his second term and the first Presidential election without an incumbent President or VP in 08.
This should be the golden opportunity for the Democratic Party to win and for the progressive activist wing to govern and form an agenda that will form a New Agenda for the emerging Democratic Majority.
We remember the New Deal because it provided an agenda tested by governing. We will not be able to regain power by running on the New Deal nor will we be able to devise a New Agenda without governing.
We need the moderate wing of the Democratic Party to win elections. It is as simple as that. Greenwave is just another means of shooting ourselves in the foot and assuring the GOP retains its grip on power.
Robert Chapman
Lansing, New York
PACH12@TWCNY.RR.COM
by
Robert Chapman (28 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 557 comments)
on Tuesday, February 7, 2006 at 5:46:33 PM
You are absolutely correct in your assessment of the worthlessness of the Democratic Party leadership and its directionless course and lack of coherency. Those who cling to the memory of the "big tent" democrats are simply failing to see clearly the absence of any there there. How many abysmal campaigns will it take before we understand that the Democratic Party left us a long time ago.
Each passing election shows clearly that the former democratic base is eroding rapidly. Minorities are voting Republican in greater numbers each election cycle, especially Hispanics. Labor is failing to heed the words of its union bosses, who still support the Dems, and vote GOP . Any demographic you choose to check shows an erosion of support for the Democrats. Can you blame them? I certainly cannot.
The hesitation one sees in switching support to the Greens comes from the penchant of Americans for instant gratification and fear of hard work, frankly. It is a commitment that will span generations to build a new political party here, and the deck is definitely stacked against such efforts to be certain.
Those who so quickly condemn you for what I believe to be a logical assessment of the facts would spend effort more efficaciously in working to overthrow the neoconservative leadership of the democrats that has doomed that party to irrelevancy.
Three unlosable elections lost, and before someone dismisses this as "theft" please understand that horrid campaigns and failure to deliver a clear and eloquent message kept those elections close enough for theft to be possible. How long, I wonder, will folks hold on to their illusions that the Democratic Party is the way out of this swamp we are drowning in, they are simply more alligators.
by
ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2386 comments)
on Saturday, February 11, 2006 at 7:16:04 PM
Progressive Democrats appear to have two options to pursue their goals. One is to take over the leadership of their party, an effort of longstanding and little result. Nods by the DLC to them at election time keep them in the fold long enough thwart their efforts.
The other is to respectfully join the Green Party.
Respectfully, so as not to encourge division by over assertiveness. The Green Party is based on key values, one of which is diversity, so they are open to a range of ideas. They are not dogmatic, but hold strongly to their values.
Greens know from long experience that the way to influence is through grassroots organizing, in contrast to takeover of those in power (who have made rules to keep them there). Consequently, I wish those Dems who wish to challenge their leadership well but will not grieve over their head wounds.
Given the disaffection of the public with the toady positions of the Democrat leadership, and the basic moral goodnes of the public, a powerful third party could be grown fairly quickly. The Green do believe in democracy. With Greenwave, I say go for it.
by
jotter (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 1 comments)
on Wednesday, February 22, 2006 at 11:47:45 AM
