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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSeriously? New York Times Calls Wall Street Front Group "Center-Left"
http://www.alternet.org/economy/seriously-new-york-times-calls-wall-street-front-group-center-leftSome lies will not die. As I have demonstrated repeatedly, Third Way is Wall Street on the Potomac. It is funded secretly by Wall Street (it refuses to reveal its donors), it is openly run by Wall Street, and it lobbies endlessly for Wall Street. Third Way, like every Pete Peterson front group, is dedicated to shredding the safety net as its highest priority and throwing the Nation back into a gratuitous recession through self-destructive austerity.
Third Way, like other Pete Peterson front groups, supports privatizing Social Security. That is Wall Streets greatest dream, for it would increase their revenues by hundreds of billions of dollars. Eric Laursen documented Wall Streets effort to in his recent book: The Peoples Pension: The Struggle to Defend Social Security Since Reagan. Laursen describes the Third Ways leader as a Pete Peterson protégé. Peterson is a conservative Republican billionaire made wealthy on Wall Street, who has dedicated a billion dollars of his wealth to his assault on the safety net.
I showed in these pieces how journalists and Republicans used Third Ways false flag status as a self-described center-left organization to add faux credibility to their arguments. The Republicans, for example, used comments by one of Third Ways founders deriding Elizabeth Warren as the centerpiece of ads trying to defeat Elizabeth Warren in her run for the U.S. Senate. Similarly, the Washington Posts ultra-deficit hawk, Robert J. Samuelson, used Third Ways support of austerity as faux evidence that even liberals who studied the question realized the need to inflict austerity on the Nation.
One of my prior articles provides the finance background of every member of Third Ways governing board exposing the total dominance by Wall Street and finance. My goal was to make it impossible for a journalist who did, even the most perfunctory research, on Third Way to describe it as a center-left organization (or any analogous term).
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)deutsey
(20,166 posts)instead of the Cheney propagandist she turned out to be.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)JHB
(37,132 posts)...that have spent decades being dragged toward rightward, by people whose definition of "liberal" means "insufficiently-enthusiastic cheering of conservative doctrine", and anything past that is "radical leftist".
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)Pretending things are the way you would prefer to see them to be doesn't make it so. If you cannot honestly assess the situation, you cannot come up with the best way to address it.
JHB
(37,132 posts)Overwhelming majorities oppose reductions in Social Security and Medicare. There is no majority clamoring for more free trade agreements.
Honest assessment includes assessing that there isn't much "left" in this "center left", and what there is seems to only be in terms of a few isolated issues such as gay marriage, and that doesn't really impact the current debates about chained CPI or raising the retirement age, nor on other economic issues.
It's great branding, though, if your main goal is austerity, fewer and weaker constraints on monied interests, and ever-lower taxes. It lets you position yourself as the "reasonable people", not like those zealots to the right and "radical" left.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)When the polls ask "Do you want higher taxes to pay for X" where X is Social Security, Medicare, etc. those things labeled 'entitlements' they are overwhelmingly against those 'entitlements' and higher taxes to pay for them.
hay rick
(7,521 posts)I posted on this a while back: http://www.democraticunderground.com/10021845455
One of the things I covered was a summary of Third Way's "The Bargain"- published in November of 2012: http://content.thirdway.org/publications/613/Third_Way_Report_-_The_Bargain.pdf
The summary starts:
2. Become an export giant. "Democrats must accept that expanding U.S. exports comes primarily through aggressive new trade measures like the Trans Pacific Partnership."
3. Reform corporate taxes and business regulations. "Democrats must accept that a simpler tax code with a low corporate rate and a streamlined regulatory regime that helps businesses grow is good for America."
4. Increase the productivity and educational attainment of the American workforce. "Democrats must accept that education funding comes with a commitment to reform that puts student performance above all else. They must accept that it is virtually impossible to reform and improve education without restructuring the way teachers are hired, promoted, and dismissed." Third Way Directors active in the charter school movement include William Budinger, Andrew Feldstein, and Derek Kaufman...
Their program starts off with cutting entitlements, endorsing the Trans Pacific Partnership, lower corporate tax rates, and Race to the Top style education "reform." If you think that kind of economic program is "center left" then we will have to agree to disagree.
They can make agreeable noises about supporting LGBT rights but that simply does not redeem their hard right economic agenda.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)propose.
On #1. Republicans want to privatize it entirely. On #2 - Republicans want completely free trade with everyone. On #3 - Republicans want no corporate or capital gains taxes. #4 - is a little more fuzzy.
Mind you, I disagree with every part of the 3rd way economic agenda. But they are not hard right in America by a long shot.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)When one of the parties goes extreme right and the other goes moderate Republican?
Oh dear, we are in deep shit then, the Republican party is drawing more and more neo-nazies, soon we will have to call Dick Cheney center left, or worse, left.
I always thought that ideas and policies were right , left, far right (fascist), and far left(Communist) based on reality. Those terms are now completely meaningless and arbitrarily assigned by what two parties or two people think at any given time.
I imagine it works the same way with a ph test
If you take two samples and one sample reads as 1 on the chart and your other sample reads 5, neutral ph is now 3,
So the hydrogen and hydroxide ions can go pound salt as they have nothing to do with acidity. I will take a couple samples, test them, and change the scale charts in my possession accordingly.
Thanks for the heads up!
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)There is a 2nd axis, I would label it as how closely a policy aligns with corporate interest. It is mostly unrelated to the left-right axis, though there is probably slightly more action in the corporate-right quadrant than in the corporate-left quadrant. Attempting to discuss policies corporations want using the left-right axis is mostly futile, IMO, left and right have limited relevance to bottom-line profit seekers.
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)with fascism, by definition actually.
The realm beyond the left right axis (corporate-right quadrant corporate-left quadrant as you term them) is all just marketing, even the term corporate left is meant to rebrand right wing philosophy as somehow "left wing".
corporate-right (to use your term) is either very close to, or is fascism.
corporate-left (to use your term) used to be called conservatism, a compromise between Fascism and a Democratic free market.
The policies of FDR could be said to be a compromise between Communism and a Democratic free market..
30 or 40 years ago the Republicans represented the conservative compromise and Democrats the FDR compromise, those two were reasonable versions of a mixed economy, what you are calling corporate-right quadrant is a rebranding of Fascism.
There is another axis true, but that would describe authoritarian versus civil libertarian
Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)The ideology is right wing whether proposed from a moon base, mars, US, or the bottom of the ocean, what you and the 3rd way are doing is called rebranding.
Right wing economic ideology rebranded to make it appear left wing changes the marketing and not the product.
Example: If Republicans call themselves third way Democrats (and register accordingly), they would still be Republicans, just repackaged in an attempt to falsely advertise Republicans and their policies to consumers seeking Democratic policies.
It has been effective as a marketing campaign but it is still false advertizing.
marmar
(76,985 posts)k/r
The Wizard
(12,482 posts)Why don't they just erect a statue of Goebbels in their lobby. Maybe they're trying to get some of Murdoch's readers. When did the Bush cartel install Karl Rove as the editor of the Times?
hay rick
(7,521 posts)William Black is one of the good guys. Will read article later. K&R.
nxylas
(6,440 posts)In journalism-speak, anything to the left of Third Way falls into the "sphere of deviance".
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)Dragonfli
(10,622 posts)ProfessionalLeftist
(4,982 posts)Points out the f*cking propaganda at work against us.
Zorra
(27,670 posts)If we are ever going to have an effective democratic Democratic party, every one of these filthy diseased rats must be exposed, caught, and sent back to the sewers and outhouses that they came from. Then we need to herd the cats and stand guard all around to catch and eat the Third Way rats before they can slink back in and infest our house with the deadly Red Plague again.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)who is being backed by Third Way money and make sure to expose them.
Never give donations to any candidate that has any ties to these infiltrators. Give it directly to real Progressives.
We should also now be asking candidates to go on the record with clear statements about issues on which they will be asked to vote. And on who they will have as advisers.
And in presidential races all candidates should be asked who they intende to place in their cabinets.
Excellent comment!
ReRe
(10,597 posts).... come election time. But first we have to identify them. I can't remember when the filing deadline is for the 2014 midterms. That is the day that a list can be compiled of Third Way/DLC candidates. They need to be primaried, but good, and effing eliminated in their tracks. But, that will be difficult, since they will have Wall Street big money backing them. That is why it is so important to jump on the list as soon as the filing deadline day comes!
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)Zorra
(27,670 posts)to expose them."
Excellent comment backatcha!
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)who participated in the Federally Coordinated attacks on OWS. Not one of them should be reelected imho. Maybe it's not too early to start making a list.
ReRe
(10,597 posts)... I forgot all about those anti-American Mayors. Good thinking! Let's see... the lady mayor in Oakland, where the Iraq vet was shot in the head with something by the riot-starting police? Can't remember her name. Bloomberg, in NYC, of course. My mind has gone blank..
dreamnightwind
(4,775 posts)It's very important that this work gets done. People should know what they are voting for, at the very least. The corporate media will spin corporate interests as the "center" (of course in their corporate centered world view it is by definition the center), when it has little or nothing to do with left and right, it's just about corporate profits. Nothing centrist about it, just greedy, transferring control and revenue from the grass-roots to corporations.
Exposing these connections at election time, actually well before election time, is a great place to put energy. Even better would be to have legitimate non-corporate candidates running against them.
We need a corporate taint index, or something similar, that we can point to in elections. With anonymous campaign funding sources this can be difficult to come up with, but would be worth attempting.
Junkdrawer
(27,993 posts)He signed the EPA law. How Red is that?
tabasco
(22,974 posts)What should we expect from the New York Times?
progressoid
(49,827 posts)I should have stayed in bed this morning.
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)But sadly, the Clintons took that flag, and turned it into a means of leaning the center rightward. We need to go to the left before the bloody level even comes close to balance.
DonCoquixote
(13,615 posts)Like "the interwebs killed print journalism!" this reminds me of why that is BS. If the New York times decided it wanted to act like it's old, more liberal self, people would buy it, and then they could say "this is journalism you cannot get on the internet!" The fact many of us have to huddle around here shows there is a need that is not only not being filled, but one the media is refusing to fill.