Ronnie Dugger excerpt...

[Wayne Johnson]

This Maverick Alliance sounds like a Potential Terrorist Threat to me.  One
can only hope that they have their phones bugged and the meetings monitored
before this kind of Radical Behavior moves out into the streets!    And to
think that this organization existed under the very nose of our beloved
President.   Of course, it may be that he never visited San Antonio but that
is no excuse.

Anyway who would you rather have ruling the world, Bill Gates or Phil Gramm?
(Hobson's Choice #45,567)

Bubba

Incidentally, Steve Jobs said something similar about six years
ago...."political entities...ie countries/nation states...would exist
primarly as a means of educating workers."

Welcome to the World of the Future.

-----Original Message-----
From: austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net
[mailto:austin-ghetto-list-admin@pairlist.net]On Behalf Of telebob x
Sent: Thursday, November 29, 2001 9:01 PM
To: austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net
Subject: Ronnie Dugger excerpt...


What are we in? We have an illegal President, presiding over an illegal
administration, declaring an unconstitutional war, and orchestrating, under
the cover of missile defenses, American development of weapons circling in
space which would give the United States control of every nation on earth.

What has been true since the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party in
the first half of the seventies is no truer now, but now it’s out here in
the open for all of us to see. The issue before us is who governs, who
decides, who controls–the people or the gigantic corporations and their
political puppets.

Felix Rohatyn, the famous investment banker in New York City, said to
Charlie Rose, on PBS, last Dec. 21 (I wrote it down at the time): "The
government should be the minority stockholder, and the private sector ought
to be the dominating factor." There is the truth of the intention, coming
from Wall Street. There is the issue: the people, or the corporations. There
is the issue: democracy.

One answer for democracy has been struck upon by the Maverick Alliance for
Democracy in San Antonio. For the past three years they have been sponsoring
multi-organizational gatherings of many progressive, populist, and community
organizations under the name Independent Allies. They meet every two weeks
at Estela’s on the West Side. During a part of the program called
"Noticias," a representative from each participating organization tells what
it’s up to. "Independent Allies" is not an organization, but a
communications protocol and center, and some of us are interested in
extending the idea across the state and into the country. [Meetings will be
held in San Antonio November 17-18. You could learn more about that by
phoning Bob Brischetto at 830-612-3643; his email is
brischetto@wireweb.net.] It is time for us to form now, among all our
organizations, the Equal Independent Allies, one national people’s movement,
independent of any political party, to demand and fight, for example, for:

• Public funding of our elections.

• Single-payer national health insurance.

• The restoration of the corporate tax system, the progressivity of the
income tax, and the replacement of the Social Security payroll tax with the
income tax.

• Limits on the size of corporations, the cancellation of their alleged
"personhood" and their alleged constitutional rights.

• Limits on personal wealth and a guaranteed annual income.

• Free education as high as any student can make the grades.

• First-home building subsidies and the opening of some public lands as
trust lands for homesteading.

• Equal rights and equal pay for women.

• A living wage for every working person.

• The legalization of undocumented immigrants who have been here a few years
and work and/or have families here.

• Repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and criminal prosecution of corporations
that bedevil union organizers.

• Clean energy–wind, and solar–and the phasing down and as soon as possible
of oil, coal, and nuclear power.

• International trade for people and the environment everywhere.

• A sharing of the wealth of the rich nations, including ours, with the two
billion people who have no schools and no toilets.

• And world citizenship, an international democracy, and a constitution
worthy of the human race.

I don’t think we have much time here in our beloved country. Although for
some years I have been skeptical about electoral politics as a way of fixing
a country where bribery has been legalized, I have become convinced, in the
history we are in, that if, in what time we have, we are to form a new
government for our country to replace the one that we have lost, we must use
electoral politics as nonviolent revolt. My idea is to try to find people
somewhat like Huey Long, without his corruption or crypto-fascism, willing
to defy the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington,
to be candidates for governor or U.S. Senator as Greens, as independents, as
rebellious Democrats, or even as rebellious Republicans, in as many states
as we can get going for 2002, so that by the time we get to 2005, we will
not be staring again at either George W. Bush or Albert Gore.

Ronnie Dugger was founding editor of the Observer in 1954 and later its
owner and publisher until 1994.



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