National

Day in and day out I meet some very interesting folks within the conservative movement; there are those people that want a more conservative government much like the Reagan Administration, and then there are those that believe that there is some grand conspiracy against the American people forged between the old money and the lying politicians. Now I see where the latter people come from, I see the documentation they dig up, and yes, there may be some minute shred of truth to the conspiracy. However, I believe that there is a much simpler explanation, the people were feed the Kool-Aid of Progressive rhetoric and loved it. The Kool-Aid allows the elitist to run a grand society and provides the lazy with free handouts.

Unfortunately a society built on the Progressive Kool-Aid does not provide for the existence of one group, the American Middle Class. The American Middle Class wants to work hard, there is not lazy one among them, and they have no desire to be elitists; instead, they were taught to give humble servitude to their fellow man through a deep belief in a Judeo-Christian culture. The American Middle class does not fit into the punchbowl of the Progressive Movement, they do not need to be mindlessly controlled by the Progressive elitist, and they are completely capable of running their own lives and governments. Unfortunately, the Progressives do not believe this; they believe in the heart of their hearts that 95 percent of the population is a droned mass who needs to be led hand and hand from the womb to the grave by bureaucracy in order to create a perfect society.

You see there is no grand conspiracy, there is just a hundred and fifty years of Progressive thought which has been drilled into the minds of the learned. Their understanding is that they are a special group, which is more enlightened than the lesser 95 percent of society. They feel that they have a duty to man to shape him in their image, so they go along preaching their rhetoric to the masses with a zealous tone based in the idea that without their enlightened guidance, society will simply fall apart. They see catastrophe if they are not allowed to guide man into the future, because they, only the enlightened ones, hold the key to the future.

Now if you ask me, these elitist beliefs are those of madmen, however they are commonly accepted in the Progressive Movement. Again and again you hear that the catastrophe of global climate change can only be prevented by regulations created by the Progressive elite. No one bats and eye anymore at these claims, “the debate is settled”, there is no need to continue the argument because the enlightened ones are smarter than the common man.

The truth here is that the Progressive elite are a bunch of egotistic megalomaniacs who have for years stroked each other’s egos to the point of climax. They are drunk with power and the ecstasy of control and unfortunately we are paying for their enjoyment. They see us, the American Middle Class, as their kill-joy, they cannot control us so they must drive us into a position where we will take the handouts and become lazy. Now herein lays the misunderstanding of the grand conspiracy. A conspiracy by nature must be secretive, and there is no secretiveness behind this. The truth is that the ideas of shaping the American Middle Class have been in place for over 150 years, societal management is not mysterious; however those that were in power in the early part of the 20th century were easily swayed to the to the side of Progressive thought by being told that they, the enlightened, were superior to the average man and needed to gain increased power to assist with building a grand society. Power, control, that is what the Kool-Aid tastes like, and the truth is they all, all the government officials and intellectuals at the time drank it and loved it.

Now, 150 years later we are seeing the culmination of their years of work in the dumbing down of our children through government-run education systems. We sit and watch as our wealth is stripped away by elitists which believe that they know what is best for us, and we are shoved into the impoverished managed existence of the underclass. There is no grand conspiracy; there is only the Kool-Aid of the power hungry. Now, unfortunately we are at a turning point where they may have the momentum to overtake the last stumbling block to their dream of managing a grand society, the American Middle Class. We are the last, best, and only hope for the freedom of mankind, we the ones they believe to be unenlighted stand between 1984 and 1776 and we cannot let them pass.

L.A.Times
Opinion
Putting California back to work
With state unemployment at 12% and even more underemployed, the financial insecurity caused by our economic malaise must be addressed.

Tim Rutten

November 7, 2009

The great military historian John Keegan reminds readers of the old axiom that a general's worst fault "is to take counsel of his fears." On the other hand, while politics lends itself to martial metaphor, an elected official can fail when he does not make voters' anxieties his own.

That's why the one-two punch of this week's election results and Friday's dismal unemployment numbers are a message that President Obama and other Democratic officeholders dismiss at their peril. In New Jersey and Virginia, independent suburban voters -- who went overwhelmingly for Obama in the last general election -- voted for the Republican gubernatorial candidates. In both states, nearly nine out of 10 cited jobs and the economy as their greatest concerns.

There's a reason for that beyond the brute fact of Friday's report that, for the first time in 26 years, more than 10% of American workers are without jobs. The underemployment rate -- those who want full-time work but are forced to accepted part-time positions -- now stands at 17.5%.

Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies recently reported that three of every four suburban residents either have lost a job over the past year or know someone who has. Those who have held on to their jobs are only too aware of the dirty secret behind the supposed recovery that the administration and Wall Street bulls claim is sputtering into gear: It's being fueled by a dramatic increase in worker productivity. Companies, in other words, are cutting workforces while working those who remain harder and pocketing the difference.

The implications of these abysmal employment numbers are particularly sobering for California and Los Angeles. If this state were an independent country, its $1.6-trillion economy would be the world's eighth largest -- just behind Italy and ahead of both Canada and Mexico, America's first- and third-ranking trade partners. California accounts for 13% of the U.S. GDP, 40% more than the next-biggest state, Texas.

Yet according to Friday's federal statistics, California's unemployment rate is the nation's third worst. Many economists believe that, if you aggregate the unemployed with the underemployed, our rate of what you might call job distress is 20%. Think about that: One in five willing workers in the world's eighth-largest economy is without full-time employment.

As grim as those numbers are, they mask a more troubling economic reality. Since 2000, this state has lost nearly 30% of its manufacturing jobs. That's helped fuel a growing inequality. Over the past decade and a half, the most affluent 1% of Californians have seen their share of the state's annual income go from just under 14% to more than 25%. The current recession, with its jobless recovery, is accelerating that trend: Immigrant Latinos have been particularly hard-hit because they make up 32.4% of the state's construction workers, 25.7% of those employed in the battered leisure and hospitality industries, and more than 27% of those employed in manufacturing. African Americans also are clustered in manufacturing and the building trades.

Now that he has the selection of a new police chief behind him -- a gesture toward maintaining the city's physical security -- Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa faces a more difficult challenge in finding local ways to address the same fear-inducing economic malaise that has created such financial insecurity. As economist Jack Kyser told me Friday, "Los Angeles already has a scary unemployment rate of 12%, and if you lump in the underemployed, it's already at 20%, like the state's."

Like other economic analysts, Kyser believes Villaraigosa's hopes for stimulating local economic recovery took an all-but-unnoticed hit this week when a deal between Italian rail-car manufacturer AnsaldoBreda and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority -- which would have included construction of a state-of-the-art factory in a downtown redevelopment district -- fell apart. The facility, which would have created hundreds of construction and manufacturing jobs, was to have been the anchor of a new, green factory district. Loss of the deal reportedly helped speed the departure of Community Redevelopment Agency head Cecilia V. Estolano. Her departure leaves the mayor's administration with vacancies at the top of the CRA, the Department of Water and Power, the Housing Department and the Department of Building and Safety.

That places particular pressure on Villaraigosa. Alone among America's great cities, Los Angeles encompasses within its political boundaries substantial urban and suburban polities -- and those are the groups this recession has hit the hardest.

As Kyser said: "A jobless recovery has a lot of political implications."

Hofstra University's National Center for Suburban Studies recently reported that three of every four suburban residents either have lost a job over the past year or know someone who has. Those who have held on to their jobs are only too aware of the dirty secret behind the supposed recovery that the administration and Wall Street bulls claim is sputtering into gear: It's being fueled by a dramatic increase in worker productivity. Companies, in other words, are cutting workforces while working those who remain harder and pocketing the difference.

Kool-Aid comes in more than one flavor.

At least you can add real cane sugar or Stevia to it. Not be stuck with Corn Sweetner or Aspartame or Splenda... The OP makes some interesting points, though...

The operative word of the OP is "elite," not progressive. Progressive is good. Just like conservative is good. Or at least both can be good. There is room (and need) for both in our country, as it should be. Where would we be without progressive vision to advance society? And where would we be without the conservative pragmatism to make sure it works?

The truth in the OP only exists when the words "elite" and "progressive" are combined. Criticizing the elite progressive and then extrapolating to the whole of the progressive view just isn't valid. A similar article could be written about the "elite conservative." Plenty of them around making things hard for the American Middle Class as well, because like the elite progressive, they think they are better than everyone else.The common denominator is "elite."

Curiously, there are quite a few elite in Washington D.C., sent there by the very same middle class voter that they regard with such disdain. Articles like the OP only perpetuate the anti-middle class bias in government, as progressive voters exact revenge on their conservative neighbors by electing the same elitist malefactors to office instead of even considering the worthiness of a candidate from "the other side." Just as conservatives will punish progressive citizens by putting their own elite into office rather than support a true public servant if they have differing views.

Here's a thought...The country is more or less split down the middle on most views and that's fine. It will probably always be that way. Might even be why this country has come as far as we have. Balance. So it follows that there will be representation in government that is close to 50-50. Maybe 60-40 or so at times, but probably not much more off balance than that.

Your views will be represented in there somewhere. So...next election, why not vote for the better candidate? If you feel "your" candidate is an elitist a$$, or in the case of most incumbents, you know they are, simply don't vote for them. Don't worry about crossing party lines. These lines are largely imaginary anyway. A more realistic line is the one between the elite and the rest of us. That is the line you cross when you vote for the same self-serving candidates over and over again.

"A more realistic line" is the one the lobbyist put between us and our elected representatives. The current healthcare reform battle is a perfect example of that line.

It doesn't really matter whether you are a republican or democrat. The Lobbyist have bought enough of each side to make it irrelevant.

The problem with the op is the sloppy use of all the terms. Progressive, elite, conservative, judeo-christian - all of these have been so misused and distorted over the years that they've grown both trite and meaningless.

Do we complain about elites when the military is described as "an elite fighting force?" Do we really have contempt for our most highly educated? The ones who took us to the moon, won the cold war and built the best public higher education system in the world? Do we disparage the progressives such as Teddy Roosevelt who busted the monopolies or the other progressives who did away with the spoils system?

Of course there are problems. Of course there are out of touch politicians. But from where I'm sitting, the real scoundrels are those who spend millions to lobby in order to get billions from the public trough. The billionaires who spend millions to reap billions in tax cuts which are actually destroying the middle class by impoverishing them.

The "judeo-christian" philosophy is not what this country was based on. It is part of our heritage, but even more so is the enlightenment. This is why neither the word "God" nor the words "Jesus Christ" appear in the Constitution which is the blueprint for our republic.

The Constitution itself is the progressive result of the enlightenment.

The constitution was a result of enlightenment however, the path which that enlightenment took was to free mankind not enslave them to the rule of others. Enlightenment and education in itself is the greatest thing that one can obtain, the choice becomes to use it for good or for personal gain. The founding fathers used it to free mankind; the progressive movement uses it to control it.

True enlightenment comes when you understand that no one has the right to tell others how they must live there lives.

If we talk of liberty, what gives you the right to tell someone that they cannot marry someone else just because they are of the same sex? At the same time, what gives you the right to tell someone they cannot own a firearm, or that they cannot pray before a football game? What is the difference; they are both the rights of the people to freedom. So why then do we debate on the trivial, the founders of the nation realized this, the trivial laws were given to the local governments to attend to because the job of the federal government was to ensure defensible freedom, not to control the people. The job of the federal government is to ensure, that we can practice any religion you want anywhere you want, to make sure that all people have equality of opportunity, and the rights to live their lives in the way that they see fit. Every time we increase the role of the government to regulate the access to these rights we inadvertently destroy the rights of those that have opposing view points.

True progressive thought was to create a constitution and government which allowed for the freedom of the people, not the age old ideas of allowing a small group of people to create laws which restrict them.

The founding fathers used it to free mankind; the progressive movement uses it to control it.

That's B.S.

The conservative movement seeks "freedom" in economic terms notwithstanding the "freedom" to possess weapons. The progressive movement seeks "freedom" in terms of civil liberties.

Each side has traditionally tried to impinge on the others' vision of "freedom" & still is...Progressives push for less economic freedom (taxes/gov't bureaucracies), conservatives push for less personal freedom (police state policies).

The US Constitution established protection of personal freedoms in the form of the Bill of Rights which many conservatives consistently challenge...One notable conservative pundit advocates doing away with freedom of speech.

The purpose (& spirit) of the Constitution is clearly stated in it's preamble...Distorting the letter of the Constitution to support right wing ideology changes neither it's true spirit or purpose.

The Constitution did not free mankind. In fact it enshrined slavery and prevented its abolition. It was for later generations to fight for and progressively improve the Constitution by abolishing slavery (13th amendment) and for the first time putting equal rights in the Constitution (the 14th). It still does not contain the right to vote for president.

The Constitution left it to the states to determine who could and could not vote. At first, most states required voters to be white males who owned property. As years passed, states progressively extended the franchise, but unevenly. Eventually, the Constitution was progressively amended so that the right to vote shall not be “denied or abridged” on account of race (15th), sex (19th), failure to pay a poll tax (24th) and for those 18 years and older, age (26th). Of course states still retain the power to deny the right to vote on other grounds such as having been convicted of a felony.

As for economic liberty, I think the libertarian wing of the conservative movement missed the irony in Anatole France’s comment, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." They think a progressive tax code impinges on economic freedom by taxing the rich more and offering assistance to the poor. They don't realize that the rich are rich BECAUSE of the government, which provides the social and legal framework within which the rich can accumulate wealth and keep it from other people. They use the Constitution to protect their property from being taken by the government, they use legislatures to pass laws forbidding trespass, theft, regulation, and taxes and to fund all the infrastructure so necessary for commerce. They use the executive to carry out and enforce all such laws, and the courts to enforce their contracts. Taxes pay for all that government, but the rich avoid paying as much as possible, even though they reap for more from all that the taxes fund.

Without government setting and enforcing economic rules, economic life in the United States would resemble a football game with no rules and no refs. There wouldn’t be many players in that game.