It's time for the Democrats to resume being the New Deal Party

[shanemcg]

In the State of the Union speech from January 1944, Franklin Roosevelt laid out a second bill of rights, rights which he believed would allow human beings to be able to fully enjoy the freedoms guaranteed by the original.

That was 70 years ago and look where we are now. The party of FDR talks about "restructuring" and cutting the very programs that our great President fought to achieve for us all.

For all the scrambling for voters, the fact is that fully half or better of the eligible voters in the US don't bother to vote. It isn't because they are stupid or don't care; they do not believe it makes any difference.

We need to pick up the mantle of FDR and fight to make his second bill of rights a reality. Saying "it can't be done" kills any chance from the get go. It can be done and it would have been done a long time ago if FDR had survived the war. Instead, we got what we got.

The second bill of rights. I always point out to any right winger I bring up the topic to that the FIRST on the list is a J.O.B. This is not about handouts or a free lunch. A basic RIGHT is the right to a job that pays you enough to enjoy a decent living and provide you with the means to secure the other rights:

Food, clothing and leisure
Farmers' rights to a fair income
Freedom from unfair competition and monopolies
Housing
Education

It's time. This needs to be done. WE need to be The Greatest Generation and accomplish this. It's as Democratic as Democratic can be.

[Cal33]

1. Welcome to DU, Shane. I fully agree with you, we do need a new New Deal. I believe it's going to

take some doing before any real change takes place. PCCC is one of the more active organizations promoting
Progressive democracy. Right now they're doing what they can to make a petition to undo the new
SCOTUS decision to give the super-rich more power in controlling the election votes. They have a goal
of collecting 500,000 signatures for their petition to Congress to make Congress answerable not only to
the wealthy voters, but also to all of us average American voters.

More than 400,000 signatures have already been collected. Would you like to add your name to fill up the gap?
The post is right here "Politics 2014" near the top of the page (right now, anyway).

Welcome to DU again!

[shanemcg]

2. i will do that

Thanks for the welcome.

[shanemcg]

3. Wow, ok. Hope this isn't a statement on how Democrats feel about the New Deal

I'd think there'd be more people chiming in in agreement.

Oh, well. We need to have a serious discussion about getting our financial system back in control. They control us, not vice versa.

There is no first order of business, things must be done across the board. The Fed needs to be re-structured or shit canned. Period. A private consortium of bankers, who have proved that they RIG everything already, run our entire financial system. No, that's not a recipe for disaster. Another reason is they aren't fulfilling their duties. When established the Fed was supposed to stabilize the economic system and work for FULL employment. I believe they have visibly failed on both counts. We have had the GREAT Depression and the 2nd Greatest (or worse) in 2008, all under the hand of the Fed. They don't even pretend to give a fuck about Employment.

At the same time, Wall St banks must be privatized and put back to the work they were chartered to do. I don't believe they were given carte blanche to do whatever criminal or sleezy IF legal tactic to make a buck and if it hurts the People and Country, so what. The main problem is that GANGSTERS figured out if they went legit and OWNED the banks they could make even more money. No more drugs, booze and whores for them! Bugsy Blankfein, Legs Dimon and Lucky Corzine need to be rooted out.

At the same time as this we need to be doing something about cleaning up elections and campaign contributions.

A Nuclear Triad so to speak.

Just my $.02.