NOTE: this blog is no longer active as of 12/07. New one: http://blog.kirchhof.com
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
Thu, 07 Jul 2005
Why Wait Until The Last Minute?
The time has come to make the Official Epistemic Ingemination
endorsement for the 2006 gubernatorial race. Kinky Friedman gets the nod.
And, yes children, I am dead serious.
Those of you that read this weblog — and there are not a lot, maybe
500 unique visitors in a good month, but you are extremely high
quality visitors — know that I take politics
seriously. I am a proud progressive liberal populist. I am enough of a
liberal populist that I oft-times find common ground with far
right-wing conservatives over on the other side of "libertarian", much
as the ACLU does. Let me define "liberal progressive populist" as I
see it.
By liberal, I still think that Joe Conason illustrates it
best:
"If your workplace is safe; if your children go to school rather
than being forced into labor; if you are paid a living wage,
including overtime; if you enjoy a 40-hour week and you are allowed
to join a union to protect your rights -- you can thank liberals. If
your food is not poisoned and your water is drinkable -- you can
thank liberals. If your parents are eligible for Medicare and Social
Security, so they can grow old in dignity without bankrupting your
family -- you can thank liberals. If our rivers are getting cleaner
and our air isn't black with pollution; if our wilderness is
protected and our countryside is still green -- you can thank
liberals. If people of all races can share the same public
facilities; if everyone has the right to vote; if couples fall in
love and marry regardless of race; if we have finally begun to
transcend a segregated society -- you can thank
liberals. Progressive innovations like those and so many others were
achieved by long, difficult struggles against entrenched power. What
defined conservatism, and conservatives, was their opposition to
every one of those advances. The country we know and love today was
built by those victories for liberalism -- with the support of the
American people." -- Joe Conason, "Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda
Machine and How It Distorts the Truth"
I define progressive (and I think that a better word should
be used in the political context) much as the Progressive
Party Platform of 1924 did:
Under our representative democracy the people protect their liberties
through their public agents.
The test of public officials and public polities alike must be: Will
they serve or will they exploit the common need?
The reactionary continues to put his faith in mastery for the solution
of all problems. He seeks to have what he calls the strong men and
best minds rule and impose their decisions upon the masses of their
weaker brethren.
The progressive, on the contrary, contends for less autocracy and more
democracy in government, for less power of privilege and greater
obligations of service.
Under the principle of ruthless individualism and competition, that
government is deemed best which offers to the few the greatest chance
of individual gain.
Under the progressive principle of cooperation, that government is
deemed best which offers to the many the highest level of average
happiness and well being.
It is our faith that we all go up or down together that class gains are
temporary delusions and that eternal laws of compensation make every
man his brother's keeper.
By populist, I mean that We The People are the entity to be
served by Our Government. The one great test of every piece of
legislation should be "How does this serve the common good?"
Government in its finest form should pool common resources for the
maximum benefit of the owners of those resources, the governed.
Government has no business serving the needs of an Exxon-Mobil where
they conflict with the common good. Let me quote my own writing here
to illustrate a point:
Now let's talk about HOW your captains of industry are able to "create
wealth." They use the infrastructure that was created with YOUR tax
dollars. The highway system. The air traffic control system.
Surface water impoundment and distribution. Traffic control and
routing. Weight, measure, and process
standardization. Telecommunications and telemetry. The water and
wastewater system. Railroads. Mass transit. Satellite navigation and
communications. Radio and television. Statistical information. Cable
television distribution from uplink to wall socket. Hydroelectric,
coal, gas, and nuclear power. The principles behind the computer
that you're sitting in front of. Medical research, statistics,
drugs, and technologies. The electrical distribution grid. The
Internet. Shipping and tracking technologies. Weather
prediction. Start-up loans. Geological, hydrological and
oceanographic mapping. The education of the workforce. The
development of all of these (and much, much more) were-or-are either
heavily subsidized or completely funded with taxpayer money. All are
managed, run, and regulated to varying degrees with your tax
dollars.
I am not anti-business. I am very much pro-small business. Small
business is the backbone of this economy; it is where innovation and
honesty and competition happens. But when small business gets big
enough to adversely influence fair competition, it becomes a
problem. For example, I love the things that Wal-Mart sells. I want to
see them widely available to everyone. That's why I buy them at
locally owned hardware stores, and not at Wal-Mart.
We see the logical end game of this big/small business schism
happening right now. And Texas Politics is a cesspool of cronyism in
service of these myriad big-business oligarchies, worse even than
Washington D.C.
The time has come for a populist resurgence. And it just so happens
that we have a populist in this horse race. I don't have a hair on my
ass if I don't grab on hard and help out in any way that I can. Hear
me well: Kinky Friedman is already more powerful than any politician
in Texas. He can stare down an Exxon-Mobil and make them blink with
nothing more than a microphone. He is smart, and savvy, and informed,
and fearless. And he is Ours.
He understands that Politics is
People. If you have the People on your side, you have more
power than all of the fat cats combined.
I have been talking with the folks in the campaign, and I have
agreed to blog about Texas Politics over at the Kinky site. This means
that most of the political stuff usually found here will move over
there; I'll be turning my attention and my available research cycles
to Texas. I'll still put "neat stuff" unrelated to politics over here,
though, and national politics will stay here.
The candidates in this upcoming race have no idea what
they're up against. They've never had to address a living
populist. Just dead ones. It is as if they will be trying to run a
campaign against a Mark Twain or a Will Rogers, and I pity the fool
that gets into a debate with the Kinkster. Richard "Kinky" Friedman
is an extremely intelligent, dedicated, compassionate and well
informed individual. And with that aforementioned microphone, he can
cut your legs off so cleanly that you won't even be bleeding when you
realize you've fallen over after you stop laughing.
Politicians hate being a laughingstock, but that is just about the
only kind we have in Texas. They're really going to hate this
campaign.
I strongly urge you to stay at home on primary day next spring; if
you vote in the primary, you can't sign the petition. On the day after
the primary, go and sign a petition to get Richard Friedman on the
ballot for Governor. And vote for him in November of 2006. In the
meantime, give what you can to his campaign.
"Why the hell not?" indeed. Just watch.
Posted at 17:19 by Randy Kirchhof [Permalink]
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