Enough is enough. Jonathan Tasini nails it dead on in regards to the current state of politics in America, and our complicity in tolerating it.

Here are a few excerpts from this exceptional piece…

Mind-boggling. Cowardly. Tone deaf. When I read what passes for the economic agenda for “liberal” Democrats and even progressives, I can’t help but think that they have lost their minds, their imagination or their spines. And I have judiciously left out the expletives that come to mind so my editor will let this piece run.

Let me remind the quivering political leaders and think-tank, inside-the-Beltway experts about the economic insecurity most people face in their daily lives. The divide between rich and poor has never been greater; wages are barely keeping up with peoples’ bills, driven down in part by the corporate global pursuit of the lowest wage possible; personal debt is at an all-time high; 48 million Americans lack health care and millions more pay for inadequate coverage. As for the government, it’s a fiscal disaster mainly because this administration, aided and abetted by some Democrats, has blessed a wholesale raid on the public till by those for whom avarice knows no limits.

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Trade - It’s a no-brainer to stop anymore so-called “free trade” agreements, which have utterly failed to promote the welfare of the globe’s citizens. But, future trade deals will not be fixed with the band-aid of “enforceable labor and environmental provisions,” as some folks want, or tinkering along the edges on issues such as layoffs. We have to start with an entirely new vision of what trade means. The first page of every trade agreement should state that trade should take place for the benefit of the people, not corporations. It should spell out the specific goals in advancing prosperity and a decent standard of living-and, then, outline how corporations can serve that purpose. We need to replace the World Trade Organization, which is run by un-elected lobbyists and shills for global corporations, with a body we might call Global Prosperity-an open, democratic, transparent organization which figures out how to best manage an equitable allocation of work on an exhausted, depleted planet.

Corporate Rights - Take them on. In the past 100-plus years, corporations have accumulated rights never envisioned by the founders (which makes you wonder about the intellectual integrity of the conservative jurists on the federal bench who view themselves as “strict constructionists” but behave as shills for the expansion of corporate rights). Corporations now have Constitutional rights that were supposed to be just for individuals: for example, corporations have a 1st Amendment right to free speech (for more on this, check out the Program on Corporations, Law and Democracy). And, if you can believe this, just the other day, the Committee on Capital Markets Regulation recommended that it be made more difficult to indict or sue companies accused of wrong-doing-as if Enron had never happened.

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From my vantage point, fighting for the minimum wage is a cop-out aimed at avoiding the debate that corporate power is the central threat to a decent standard of living. Look at it this way: People elected Democrats so they can earn $7.25 an hour? You’re kidding? For full-time work, my calculator shows that comes out to a whopping $15,000. How inspiring.

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We may not win some of these battles. But, we need people who don’t stick their finger up to see which way the wind is blowing but work to change the way the wind is blowing. They are the people who stand up and refuse to be silent because they know what is right and what is wrong. They are not swayed by how the wind blows because they know they have the power to change its direction.

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