What about all the liberal rednecks?

They exist. Why aren't progressives talking to them?

Backstory: So I'm reading the book "No More Prisons" by League Of Pissed Off Voters (aka League of Indy Voters, aka League of Young Voters) founder William Upski Wimsatt.

It's all about hip-hop activism, inner city organizing, etc. And I think that's largely been the model that the league has followed. Which is great- If you live in a city.

I had an epiphany today, which is tied back to my training at the 1st annual Smackdown (aka organizer training session) in Columbus, Ohio back in 2004. After hearing story after story of how hard it is to be poor in a city like New York, I began to feel like, "well damn, I thought I was poor, but I've had it pretty good." But then after talking with the same people, I discovered that they had all sorts of opportunities that I never had, like specialty public schools for the arts, after school programs, they were cultivated for leadership by these like... community unions which served as like a parallel government.

Anyways, I'm not saying that living in a city doesn't suck-- like I said, I heard horror stories too, but I realized when talking with these kids, that rural folks like myself grew up in a different kind of poverty that sucked in different ways. I ate gov't cheese and gov't bologna growing up. Sometimes that and mustard was all we had to eat. My middle school almost folded because our property tax base wasn't enough to support it.
Arts program? Phht. Music program? HA! We barely had a gym program. Hell, we barely had a school.
What would the solution be? Bus us to another school? Where exactly might that school be at? We consolidated already to cut costs...

In the Boy Scouts, parents brought venison they'd hunted, killed, and cleaned themselves, for barbecues. They talked obliquely about factory farms and pollution, and how hunting connects us to the land. Hunters and fishermen are ready and available allies on environmental issues, but we dismiss them as rednecks. To our own peril.

Anyways, the long and the short of it is this:

The next breakthrough that progressives are going to have to make before we can effectively take our country back, is getting a foothold in areas of rural poverty.

The question we need to be asking is, "What about all the liberal rednecks?"

REVOKE BP'S CORPORATE CHARTER

revoke bp's charter

by the Punk Patriot



After my last video on evolution and capitalism, many of you asked me:

Do you support capitalism?

Capitalism is a force of nature. You may as well ask if one supports a type of gravity. One must keep in mind, however, that markets should serve society, not the other way around.

The type of market that Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Rothbard, and Ayn Rand talk about, is a market that is given complete dominion over society. Society does not exist to serve markets, markets exist to serve society, and because they have the relationship backwards, their theories are destructive.

I support the mixed-market capitalism that Ralph Nader advocates for, and I support Adam Smith's 'small-businesses-only', version of capitalism, but not lassiez-faire capitalism, and not corporate oligarchical capitalism.

Corporations are a business model that Adam Smith despised. They remove accountability from the market, and allow businesses to take risks that they never would, and to act in ways that- free from concequnce, and are thus outside of the context of the morality in society.

But corporations have an achilles heel. Corporations exist because of Corporate Charter. These charters are issued by state governemnts. These charters are like contracts, saying that the business in question exists to serve the public good.

It’s clearly the case that many corporations do not exist to serve the pubic good. Citizens and Government alike should be far less shy about revoking corporate charters when a business becomes destructive to society. For instance, BP and Halliburton are both responsible for cutting corners, and doing things wrong to save money, resulting in one of the worst environmental disasters in 25 years, and potentially one of the worst environmental disasters known to modern man. They have destroyed local economies throughout the gulf coast for generations. They should have their corporate charter revoked, and BP should cease to exist as a corporation in the United States.

We the people have the power to do this. We always have. We should not be afraid to use this power. My task for YOU, my audience, is to find what state’s laws BP America is incorporated under. Then we shall organize to take action. (Stay Tuned)

The free market does not know good from evil, it only knows profits. Just the same, fire does not know useful from destructive, it only knows to burn.

A totally free market will bend towards monopoly, and at that point it ceases to function properly. If left completely to it’s own devices a free market will turn into totalitarianism. Like a fire, it needs to be tended from time to time, to keep it from smothering itself as it eats itsself alive and destroys it’s own structures in a fit of continuous consumption.

There must be restrictions placed on the market, because it does not know service from disservice, or creation from destruction. The market must be regulated to keep it from destroying society-- in the same way that we keep fire in a fireplace to keep it from consuming the entire house.

And when a particular fire gets out of control, it must be snuffed out.