Les hit the nail on the head with his review of Sirota and his book. While I have no love of the DLC and the DC "triangulators", Sirota just goes too far to find any hint of something he doesn't agree with to launch a vicious attack on the whole enterprise.

For example, he throws out the baby with the bathwater in excoriating the recently announced Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institute -- it isn't perfect, but a lot more of it is good for progressives and labor (his primary constitutency) than bad.

Sirota has the gist of it right, but don't take every attack he makes as gospel.

And the takeover will continue this summer when Bill Frist and the Senate Republicans try to ram through legislation killing the estate tax (which they viciously, but effectively call the "death tax") once and for all.

Not that there isn't going to be a fight about it -- Bill Gates Sr. and a bevy of progressive groups from around the country are coming together to oppose the Republicans and instead mend, not end the inheritance tax.

I am somewhat affiliated with them myself, so I apologize if this comes off a bit like comment spam, but it's an issue Blue Oregon is probably squarely behind -- I've got to bring it to your attention somehow!

Please visit the site linked under my name, we've got info on calling your members of congress and signing our petition. Senator Wyden should be with us already, but if we're going to win this, it will take winning over people like Gordon Smith as well.

Part of the problem: As a congressman, I was never comfortable with class-based politics. But having witnessed a quarter century of Robin Hood in reverse, I welcome Sirota's book. It should open eyes to ways to solve problems besetting workaday families and the cozy political arrangements that often create those problems.

I still remember the 1992 primary. I saw Les at an event and asked him about something in his voting record. I'd heard him give a great speech and then discovered that wasn't the way he voted.

(I am angry about discovering recently that my state rep. said one thing to a reporter and then voted differently, and I see no difference between that and what Cong. AuCoin did.)

I walked up to Les and asked him why he voted contrary to his speech. He first tried to blame his opponent for talking about his voting record (Isn't that hubris to ask how dare anyone ask about a voting record? Shouldn't people in legislative office vote as they would want their vote to be known if it hit the front page?) Then he fudged for the next couple follow up questions. Finally, he admitted he'd wondered how to vote, so he'd contacted some lobbying organizations and asked their opinion. And according to what he said, when those lobbyists said it was OK to vote a certain way, that was how he voted.

FOLKS: I submit that attitude is what makes people angry at all politicians, makes some register Indep., makes others support term limits. That idea of lobbyists instructing someone how to vote strikes me as hubris. I recall at the time people joking that anyone who had that attitude should list the lobby groups they listen to in their literature or on the ballot.

It doesn't matter what lobby groups those are. If "we the people" are less important than lobby groups, why does it matter which party someone belongs to?

How come it's always the big evil corporations or the rich people that deserve the blame?

The public voted these guys into Congress and they can vote them out. But do they? Nope. Even though there is plenty of information that states that the current budgets will run the country into the ground.

But people turn a deaf ear to this. So rather than launch into discussions about class and corporations, why not discuss why the average worker in the South or the Midwest is the person who voted against his or her own economic interests and supported tax cuts for the wealthy and a war that has cost, what a quarter of a trillion dollars and ended up raising gas prices.

That may be, Torrid. But, Marcus makes a very valid and germaine point. And it deserves more than a trite answer.

Marcus, you've touched on precisely why I vigorously oppose term-limits for elected officials. The same majority that can get together to enact term limits can cut to the chase and vote the bums out. What they want, though, is a cop out so that they don't have to accept responsibility for their own votes.

As for the why... I'd say it's equal measures of fear and willful ignorance.

Remember Dale Carnegie's monumental observation that, "a man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still."

If fear is the prime motivating factor for the electorate then why doesn't it work if you couch the message in terms that Medicare, Social Security, etc. is going to run out of money soon, that if you don't support universal health care then you may have no health coverage, etc. etc.

What's the fearful motivator for letting multimillionaires get a pass on the estate tax or decreasing the capital gains tax rate?

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