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Blue Jeans in High Places
“The Coming Makeover of American Politics”
by Mike McCabe
A review by Fritz Pointer 6/4/17
Dear friends suggested this book to me, Drs. Ralph and Nancy Knudson, retired MD’s, from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Last week, in Madison, Wisconsin, on a trip to “Unveil” my wife’s father’s tombstone, Prof. Daniel Kunene, a customary South African tradition that must be fulfilled no later than one year after the passing of a relative or loved one, Ralph told me that Mike McCabe will possibly be running for Governor of Wisconsin and he and Nancy may support him.
For the past 15 years, Mike McCabe, Director and founder of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, has followed the money in American politics. He believes that the inheritance of American democracy has been squandered, “largely because we have allowed bribery to become legal again.” Of course old-fashioned bribery remains a crime, but “Today’s legal bribes aren’t called bribes. Now they’re called campaign contributions.” So, what is bribery sounds charitable, philanthropic.
And, with the 2010 Supreme Court promulgating Citizens United, one of the dumbest rulings ever concocted, standing democracy on its head, by allowing corporations and other powerful groups to spend unlimited sums on elections with the simplistic logic: if people could be property, then property can be people, McCabe finds appalling, and accelerating America’s plunge into the abyss of oligarchy.
Indicative of this is the 2012 election when, according to McCabe: “32 donors of Super PACs matched all of the money raised from small donors by President Obama and his rival Mitt Romney combined. Yep…the top 32 Super PAC donors – giving nearly $10 million apiece – contributed a total of $313 million to finance election advertising by these special interest committees.” Oh, yes, we have “freedom of speech,” but If money is speech, then who is being heard?
McCabe asks us to question why and how “in the span of a single generation, Wisconsin (like many other states) has gone from a place where it was possible to run successfully for statewide office for $145 (Bill Proxmire, 1982) to one that has seen $81 million spent to decide who sits in the governor’s office.” He reminds us that in 1897 and again in 1905 Wisconsin took a stand “banning corporate campaign contributions and election spending,” and (the nation) should do this again.
“Where are the voices” McCabe asks, “saying it’s time to extend the promise of free public education beyond high school? Where are the voices saying higher education and advanced vocational training needs to be as accessible and affordable in the twenty-first century as elementary and secondary education were made in the twentieth?” They are not saying it, he says, because they are not being paid to say it. Instead, not a single new state university campus has been created in Wisconsin since 1968. But since 1994, eight new prisons have been built and a ninth purchased.
Like “Fighting Bob” La Follette, who called himself a “Progressive Republican” McCabe believes: “the business of government is not business, but service to the common people”…. and, that “the will of the people is the law of the land.” And, with that, he recognizes that, “More and more every day, our country is becoming less white, less male-dominated, less Christian, less ‘traditional’,” hence, Citizens United.
So, Mike McCabe reminds us that The Founders wanted a wall between not only church and state, but also between business and state.
Whether we realize it or not he says, “the political spectrum has been turned on its head. It is vertical, not horizontal. The definitive question in today’s politics is not whether you are standing with those on the left, right or middle; it is whether you are with those on the top or bottom or somewhere in between.” Who are the Democrats and Republicans standing with? Who are they working for: Those on the top or those on the bottom?
“One party is scary and the other is scared” McCabe repeats, and we know what he’s talking about. “Both parties belong at or near the top because both are catering to wealthy special interests and neither major party is listening to ordinary people or reliably acting on their behalf… The horizontal spectrum continues to foster the illusion of two parties with separate and distinct masters.” Rather, we might want to begin to talk about “royals” and “commoners.”
McCabe makes clear, “I am not talking about creating a third party. I am talking about having at least one that truly owes its allegiance to the people.” We need, he believes, a new political identity, thinking, vocabulary and new symbols. Liberal and Conservative, for example boxes us into horizontal thinking. We refer to politicians as leaders, yet “With a few impressive exceptions, politicians are consummate followers. They don’t move a muscle without getting marching orders from their key supporters.” The current symbols for the Democratic and Republican parties are the donkey and the elephant. When giving lectures, McCabe begins by asking: “How many of you own a donkey?” No hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own an elephant?” Of course no hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own a pair of blue jeans?” And, every hand goes up. So, “what would better represent people, an elephant or donkey or pair of blue jeans?”
What would better distinguish us from the suits on Wall Street or on K Street where all the lobbyists hang out or the suits on Capitol Hill whose pockets are lined? “What” he asks, “could better symbolize the political identity of the masses than blue jeans? “ Overall, the book is as refreshing as Mike’s speeches. He leaves us with hope: “We face nothing today that hasn’t been faced – and defeated – before. Right on this soil.” He gives us strategies, things we can do, starting locally and thinking globally.
Dr. Nathan Hare comments on Fritz Pointer's book review of Blue Jeans in High Places
Sounds like Fritz is an equal opportunity finger pointer, but he’s got a point.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
...Just don’t try to turn it into a religion like our prople tend to do. Struggle is its own excuse for being; and we don’t need another ideology that doesn’t know it’s left foot from its right.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
Marvin X replies to Dr. Hare
Do the foots know right from wrong?
--Marvin X
Naw. That’s how come they be getting off on the wrong foot.
Thank you,
Nathan Hare
Marvin X replies
JB say get on the good foot. Which one is that?
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Marvin,
Marvin,
To answer your question, that’s part of what messed us up. Say you’re orthodox, as most people are, that means you dance or box or do anything with the right foot (we’re not talking of the wrong fit just now) backing you up, leading with the other. For most people they are starting with or pivoting off their left foot, for others it’s just the reverse but no matter, because they are doomed to comply or deal with other people coming from an orthodox approach, meaning they’re doubly challenged (as they say of people retarded). So you think of your right foot as your good foot, but for many of us it’s injured or sore, so we think of the other one as our good (not injured or sore) foot; and some of us don’t have a good foot at all, and ain’t had it for years, many injured in childhood without access to adequate medical care; so all of that just goes double. Then we might get to using the other foot as our good foot, i.e., our backup foot, until the other one heals; and just thinking of which foot is good (if neither is) confuses us again. So getting on the good foot gives us pause, so the scramble to get on the good foot becomes a syncopated frenzy of confusion James Brown called a dance (all the more if we don’t know what syncopated is, on account of our edjumacation), don’t care what it is. Like we be grinning all the time because we hurting somewhere in our self, but expected to thank God and put on a good face; so speaking of feet we can get turned upside down.
Don’t start me to talking cause I’ll tell everything I know.
Fritz Pointer comments on Dr. Nathan Hare
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Dr. Fritz Pointer
Marvin,
I am humbled and proud to read Dr. Nathan Hare's comment on my book review of Blue Jeans in High Places. It was Dr. Hare who wrote in the second edition of Black Anglo Saxons (1991), quoting Carter G. Woodson who "warned us (Black people) that any race that had remained in the same political party for 50 years (speaking then, circa 1932, of the Republican party) and hadn't gotten anything out of it deserved to be oppressed. By now we have been in rotation trapped within the Democratic Party also for more than 50 some-odd years." Perhaps, I'm not the only one who is "an equal opportunity finger pointer." As V.I. Lenin would ask: What is to be done?
Fritz
Blue Jeans in High Places
“The Coming Makeover of American Politics”
by Mike McCabe
A review by Fritz Pointer 6/4/17
Dear friends suggested this book to me, Drs. Ralph and Nancy Knudson, retired MD’s, from La Crosse, Wisconsin. Last week, in Madison, Wisconsin, on a trip to “Unveil” my wife’s father’s tombstone, Prof. Daniel Kunene, a customary South African tradition that must be fulfilled no later than one year after the passing of a relative or loved one, Ralph told me that Mike McCabe will possibly be running for Governor of Wisconsin and he and Nancy may support him.
For the past 15 years, Mike McCabe, Director and founder of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, has followed the money in American politics. He believes that the inheritance of American democracy has been squandered, “largely because we have allowed bribery to become legal again.” Of course old-fashioned bribery remains a crime, but “Today’s legal bribes aren’t called bribes. Now they’re called campaign contributions.” So, what is bribery sounds charitable, philanthropic.
And, with the 2010 Supreme Court promulgating Citizens United, one of the dumbest rulings ever concocted, standing democracy on its head, by allowing corporations and other powerful groups to spend unlimited sums on elections with the simplistic logic: if people could be property, then property can be people, McCabe finds appalling, and accelerating America’s plunge into the abyss of oligarchy.
Indicative of this is the 2012 election when, according to McCabe: “32 donors of Super PACs matched all of the money raised from small donors by President Obama and his rival Mitt Romney combined. Yep…the top 32 Super PAC donors – giving nearly $10 million apiece – contributed a total of $313 million to finance election advertising by these special interest committees.” Oh, yes, we have “freedom of speech,” but If money is speech, then who is being heard?
McCabe asks us to question why and how “in the span of a single generation, Wisconsin (like many other states) has gone from a place where it was possible to run successfully for statewide office for $145 (Bill Proxmire, 1982) to one that has seen $81 million spent to decide who sits in the governor’s office.” He reminds us that in 1897 and again in 1905 Wisconsin took a stand “banning corporate campaign contributions and election spending,” and (the nation) should do this again.
“Where are the voices” McCabe asks, “saying it’s time to extend the promise of free public education beyond high school? Where are the voices saying higher education and advanced vocational training needs to be as accessible and affordable in the twenty-first century as elementary and secondary education were made in the twentieth?” They are not saying it, he says, because they are not being paid to say it. Instead, not a single new state university campus has been created in Wisconsin since 1968. But since 1994, eight new prisons have been built and a ninth purchased.
Like “Fighting Bob” La Follette, who called himself a “Progressive Republican” McCabe believes: “the business of government is not business, but service to the common people”…. and, that “the will of the people is the law of the land.” And, with that, he recognizes that, “More and more every day, our country is becoming less white, less male-dominated, less Christian, less ‘traditional’,” hence, Citizens United.
So, Mike McCabe reminds us that The Founders wanted a wall between not only church and state, but also between business and state.
Whether we realize it or not he says, “the political spectrum has been turned on its head. It is vertical, not horizontal. The definitive question in today’s politics is not whether you are standing with those on the left, right or middle; it is whether you are with those on the top or bottom or somewhere in between.” Who are the Democrats and Republicans standing with? Who are they working for: Those on the top or those on the bottom?
“One party is scary and the other is scared” McCabe repeats, and we know what he’s talking about. “Both parties belong at or near the top because both are catering to wealthy special interests and neither major party is listening to ordinary people or reliably acting on their behalf… The horizontal spectrum continues to foster the illusion of two parties with separate and distinct masters.” Rather, we might want to begin to talk about “royals” and “commoners.”
McCabe makes clear, “I am not talking about creating a third party. I am talking about having at least one that truly owes its allegiance to the people.” We need, he believes, a new political identity, thinking, vocabulary and new symbols. Liberal and Conservative, for example boxes us into horizontal thinking. We refer to politicians as leaders, yet “With a few impressive exceptions, politicians are consummate followers. They don’t move a muscle without getting marching orders from their key supporters.” The current symbols for the Democratic and Republican parties are the donkey and the elephant. When giving lectures, McCabe begins by asking: “How many of you own a donkey?” No hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own an elephant?” Of course no hands go up. Then he asks, “How many of you own a pair of blue jeans?” And, every hand goes up. So, “what would better represent people, an elephant or donkey or pair of blue jeans?”
What would better distinguish us from the suits on Wall Street or on K Street where all the lobbyists hang out or the suits on Capitol Hill whose pockets are lined? “What” he asks, “could better symbolize the political identity of the masses than blue jeans? “ Overall, the book is as refreshing as Mike’s speeches. He leaves us with hope: “We face nothing today that hasn’t been faced – and defeated – before. Right on this soil.” He gives us strategies, things we can do, starting locally and thinking globally.