It's times like these that I half-heartedly think that there should be a junta of solid, brilliant, progressive individuals that are appointed by a committee of informed and dedicated progressives to govern this city, state, and country. What's left of our pseudo-democracy does, indeed, seem to be too perilous.

I agree with Expatriate that "it's times like these that I half-heartedly think that there should be a junta of solid, brilliant, progressive individuals that are appointed by a committee of informed and dedicated progressives to govern this city, state, and country".Addiction Recovery Idaho

I think you'll be hard pressed to find enough solid, brilliant, progessive individuals to install into a utopian dictatorship.
As George Orwell said and very appropirate to SF:
"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot. "

The problem here, as is evidenced by expatriate, is that so many professional progressive leaders have a deep seated fear of their own base. Some of this is remnant from old school leftism, as is evidenced by Stalinists like Eric Quezada, others present with elitist denegration as so many younger labor thugs tend to.

This leads them to blame their base for their own political failings and to propose such insular ideas as a benign dictatorship to solve the pesky electoral problem.

That progressives are unable to capitalize on Newsom's exposed flanks--allowing City government to crumble while cashing our tax checks--as he seeks to position himself as a viable statewide candidate, speaks volumes to our own incompetence.

The answer to our predicament is not empowering or even joking about empowering progressives as philosopher kings, rather assessing areas where we fall short and adapting.

How many SEIU members would want to spend their entire day working at the City, replete with structural dysfunction and politicization and then attend a meeting with the purple satin jacketed crowd who has spend all day long figuring out how to run roughshod over the rank and file to force the union's version of a political program on the rank and file?

Unfortunately, the nonprofiteer and labor components in the progressive coalition have discrete financial stakes in preserving the status quo. Their visceral disgust for folks who are neither part of the nonprofit coffee klatch/labor thug culture nor of the communities which nonprofits purport to service and labor purports to represent (not to mention the vast bulk of unorganized working people whom labor ignores), precludes the coalescence of a viable broad based populist coalition.

-marc

When the world is on the verge of irrevocable environmental catastrophe (which it almost is), should their be a junta consisting of omnipotent environmentalists and progressive engineers that will save the human race (albeit with the drawback of them eventually becoming drunk and corrupt with their own power)? Or is the moral highground and philosophical purity more important than our own survival? Ross supports the Clean Energy Act (which, by Ballard's own admission and subsequent recantation, his boss doesn't even know much about), while Newsom is told to support broadened powers for PG&E and will, with Jaye's prodding, aggressively campaign against the Clean Energy Act.

By the way, Marc: you seem really fond of the word "Stalinist". Keep in mind that no one knows what the hell you are talking about.

Also keep in mind that the Republicans, with the Democrats backing, have set up a program whereby a police state will spring into action should there be a major terrorist attack or some other flimsy excuse.

When the world is on the verge of irrevocable environmental catastrophe (which it almost is), should their be a junta consisting of omnipotent environmentalists and progressive engineers that will save the human race (albeit with the drawback of them eventually becoming drunk and corrupt with their own power)? Or is the moral highground and philosophical purity more important than our own survival? Ross supports the Clean Energy Act (which, by Ballard's own admission and subsequent recantation, his boss doesn't even know much about), while Newsom is told to support broadened powers for PG&E and will, with Jaye's prodding, aggressively campaign against the Clean Energy Act.

By the way, Marc: you seem really fond of the word "Stalinist". Keep in mind that no one knows what the hell you are talking about.

Also keep in mind that the Republicans, with the Democrats backing, have set up a program whereby a police state will spring into action should there be a major terrorist attack or some other flimsy excuse.

When the world is on the verge of irrevocable environmental catastrophe (which it almost is), should their be a junta consisting of omnipotent environmentalists and progressive engineers that will save the human race (albeit with the drawback of them eventually becoming drunk and corrupt with their own power)? Or is the moral highground and philosophical purity more important than our own survival? Ross supports the Clean Energy Act (which, by Ballard's own admission and subsequent recantation, his boss doesn't even know much about), while Newsom is told to support broadened powers for PG&E and will, with Jaye's prodding, aggressively campaign against the Clean Energy Act.

By the way, Marc: you seem really fond of the word "Stalinist". Keep in mind that no one knows what the hell you are talking about.

Also keep in mind that the Republicans, with the Democrats backing, have set up a program whereby a police state will spring into action should there be a major terrorist attack or some other flimsy excuse.

"By the way, Marc: you seem really fond of the word "Stalinist". Keep in mind that no one knows what the hell you are talking about."

Only because there are so few around but those who remain are stubborn. Stalinists are old school unreconstructed lefties who organize with full force to our organize you because they know the vanguard truth and you are simply not to be trusted.

Let's look at it from a performance perspective. If you think that progressives are operating at peak capacity to confront the challenges we face, then there is no problem, carry on.

If you think that progressives are falling short on confronting corporate challenges, then the question becomes why.

In the 1970s, the left organized to demand concessions from the people who owned and ran the city then. These concessions came forth in the form of nonprofits.

Currently, progressives rely on paid staffers at nonprofits to do most work that passes for politics around these parts.

Either that is working or it is not, either we assess how and when it works, how and when it does not, and then feed that information back into recalibrating the system.

The fact is that the paid nonprofit staffers are conflicted in that their income comes from their jobs, and their jobs are predicated on the continuation of social, economic and political problems.

So until this layer of ineffective paid staffers shares access with average San Franciscans, we will continue to see progressives fall further and further behind.

Since they don't trust the majority of San Franciscans, I'd not count on this happening.

-marc

"By the way, Marc: you seem really fond of the word "Stalinist". Keep in mind that no one knows what the hell you are talking about."

Only because there are so few around but those who remain are stubborn. Stalinists are old school unreconstructed lefties who organize with full force to our organize you because they know the vanguard truth and you are simply not to be trusted.

Let's look at it from a performance perspective. If you think that progressives are operating at peak capacity to confront the challenges we face, then there is no problem, carry on.

If you think that progressives are falling short on confronting corporate challenges, then the question becomes why.

In the 1970s, the left organized to demand concessions from the people who owned and ran the city then. These concessions came forth in the form of nonprofits.

Currently, progressives rely on paid staffers at nonprofits to do most work that passes for politics around these parts.

Either that is working or it is not, either we assess how and when it works, how and when it does not, and then feed that information back into recalibrating the system.

The fact is that the paid nonprofit staffers are conflicted in that their income comes from their jobs, and their jobs are predicated on the continuation of social, economic and political problems.

So until this layer of ineffective paid staffers shares access with average San Franciscans, we will continue to see progressives fall further and further behind.

Since they don't trust the majority of San Franciscans, I'd not count on this happening.

-marc

Marc writes:

"This leads them to blame their base for their own political failings and to propose such insular ideas as a benign dictatorship to solve the pesky electoral problem."

Marc, your hypocrisy boggles the mind. You are the one that steadfastly supports an electoral system which allows a small clique of power-hungry Demogreens to force upon the electorate a Green Presidential candidate that the vast majority of party members opposes while also undemocratically vetoing the candidate that the vast majority supports. This corrupt aspect of the Green Party structure is most likely the reason that the Greens have been hemorrhaging party members over the past eight years. Talk about reforming the warped system of nominating Green Presidential candidates and then I *might* not laugh in your face.

expatriate, are you on drugs? If so, please share them so that I might hallucinate reality as you do!

I do not support progressives or Greens running for offices higher than local under current circumstances as we do not have sufficient capacity to make credible runs and have been quite vocal about this.

My read is that Nader 2000, which seemed like a good idea at the time, has, in a full lifecycle analysis, cost the Green Party much more than we'd gained from it.

I support a broad based participatory democratic political process that obviates the progressive nonprofit gatekeepers. Of course, the paid nonprofiteers fear this because they fear the people for whom they speak, as they do not trust the rabble to make as informed decisions as the professionals.

This fear on the part of paid advocates and activists of giving up control to the grassroots is the achilles heal of the progressive movement as more times than not, whether nonprofit or labor union, these entities are dependent on government for funding and access and have a finite buy out price point.

Thus, the interests of the corporations, nonprofits and unions, diverge from the interests of the broad grassroots, and as often as not, the nonprofits, for profits and government will conspire to fuck the citizenry to conserve their power.

Perhaps this analysis is only partially correct, but given the abject record of failure of our current progressive advocacy structure, something has got to change if we are to leverage our power to confront the dramatic challenges we face at the hands of corporate dominance.

-marc

expat, the Green Party at the state and federal level is a virtual party. Virtual means fake.

Do you like lying about my record or does it just come naturally?

Currently, the nonprofit sector and the democrat party are very real institutions that hold very real power in San Francisco today.

In order for their power to be preserved, the Democrats and nonprofits have made common cause out of disempowering participation in self governance.

The Green Party has a lot wrong with it, especially as one moves up the totem pole from local politics, it gets more and more absurd.

But that should serve as no cover for a corrupt and reactionary cap established by existing powerholders who share a common record of failure in order to keep the citizenry away from the table.

One example of this is the People's Budget. Nothing wrong with nonprofits and service providers fighting for their slices of the pie, but not even a crumb to "the people" who are paying taxes to fund this cavalcade and getting nothing much in return.

If progressives have no place for average citizens, then they will cleave to the neighborhood/downtown coalition and we continue to lose.

Do you like losing as much as you like lying about my positions on GP absurd politics?

Why aren't my comments going through?

Marc,

You go off on so many tangents that I've become dizzy. But if I have misunderstood (i.e. not lied) your position on the "Stalinist" nature of the Green Party power structure, then I apologize.

However, until a small clique of Demogreens is overthrown and the national Green Party infrastructure is replaced with the kind of democratic internal electoral process that has been passionately advocated by Forrest Hill, then I will be proud to be a Green. Until then, I will proudly belong to the Decline to State Party, as will many former Greens (like Matt Gonzalez) who have been kicked in the balls by the statewide and national Greens.

Marc

I'm totally with you around expanding political participation and say so far beyond the existing non-profits and unions. (I work for one, and will soon be a member of the other.) We share a lot of common ground here.

But Eric Q. as a Stalinist? Give me a break. Disagree with any particular position or strategy, that's your right as a breathing human being. But really, I've worked with you before and know that you are far too intelligent and insightful to give yourself over to full-throttle red-baiting. Eric ain't a Stalinist, and throwing that word around diminishes that possibility of unity that you have very rigthteously challenged others to build.

Your friend in struggle,

James Tracy