YOU WANT HOPE?

Renowned journalist (The Nation) William Greider lays it right out on this short video. He says the Democrats have helped create this mess in cooperation with the Republicans.

You want hope? If you do then I highly recommend that we all stop being unquestioning loyalists for either political party as evidence is quite abundant that they are carrying water for the Wall Street, energy, weapons, insurance, agri-business, and pharmaceutical corporate interests.

The American people have one major advocate - ourselves. And if we want real change, and real hope, then we'd better quickly realize that no knight on a shiny white horse is going to ride up and save us from this mess.

Our saviour will be each other so we'd better not let the oligarchy talk us into turning on each other as this economy continues to collapse. Instead we have to turn to each other, take one anther's hand, and fight with and for one another.

Cooperation, unity of purpose, looking out for each other - these are the antidotes to despair and resignation. Build a movement of the people, by the people, for the people.

Give up the notion that the rich and the powerful give a damn about us. They are out to make us slaves - in the 21st century sense.

THIS JUST IN:

The New York Times is reporting that the House & Senate have reached an agreement on the final stimulus package. It will run $789 billion (about $100 billion less than first expected) and is already causing some serious upset by more progressive members of Congress.

The Times reports: Even before the last touches were put to the bill, the emerging deal infuriated some Democrats who said that President Obama and Congressional leaders had been too quick to give up on Democratic priorities. Some critics also suggested that the final figure was too small to be effective because of the grave condition of the American economy.

“I am not happy with it,” said Senator Tom Harkin, Democrat of Iowa. “You are not looking at a happy camper. I mean, they took a lot of stuff out of education. They took it out of health, school construction and they put it more into tax issues.”

Mr. Harkin said he was particularly frustrated by the money being spent on fixing the alternative minimum tax. “It’s about 9 percent of the whole bill,” he said, “which we were going to do later this year in a tax bill. Why is it in there? It has nothing to do with stimulus. It has nothing to do with recovery. This makes no sense whatsoever.”