A note to The Left

Yeah, can't you just feel it, doesn't it tingle in your shorts, this slow build to a new "movement?" Does it energize you who remember the 60s, and delight those sorry to have missed it?

Don't indulge yourselves. This is too important.

If you want to capture this opportunity, you will need to focus. This is not about sustainability or mass transit, Portlanders; stop calling every employer a "fat cat," AFL-CIO, that's just not true; it is not about gay marriage, carbon caps, dams and salmon.

If you dilute this by pulling every cause onto your wagon, you will have only the same old gang on board. And that is not enough. Haven't you learned anything from the last 20 years?

This is about power. This is about money. This is about a system systematically abused by powerful people who own our politics. Keep it focused, keep it tight, and do NOT give it up when they throw scraps from their table to the floor where you sit.

Corporations are not "We the people" written of in our Constitution. They should not have the "rights" of individuals. One man, one vote, how about one donation of one amount? Should the Koch brothers be able to buy $50 million of influence while the rest of us are stuck writing emails to our congressmen? Where is the "democracy" in that?

We need to fix it.

Goldman Sachs rules the world, along with 146 other entities that own 40% of the world's wealth. No, it was not illegal, but we can make it illegal, or at least the tactics they use to hold on to power. If those 147 control our governments, who controls the 147? A function of government is to protect the system of commerce. It can't do that if it is owned by commercial interests.

"Too big to fail" should become a footnote in history. Instead, a couple of short years after tax dollars flowed from Main Street to Wall Street, big banks are jacking us around and saying they will levy a surcharge for letting us use our own money (Bank of America: $5? Really?) while paying their CEOs millions.

Big banks need to be broken up so any of them can fail without taking down the system. That is a key element of "market" economics." There has to be a price for failure. At least, that seems to be the medecine the right is prescribing for the rest of us. If it's good enough for me, it's good enough for the Koch brothers.

Goldman Sachs? Whatever it takes to make that blood sucker less powerful should be done, now. The revolving door by which Goldman employees enter government and vice-versa is a door to corruption that needs to be slammed shut. The same rules apply to all such leviathans.

Including labor, by the way, OEA, AFL, etc. etc. etc.

Consolidation of economic power should be resisted, laws against monopolies and oligopolies rigorously enforced. No, that's not "anti-business." It is pro-business, because it establishes a fair and level playing field on which business can be openly conducted, especially small businesses on which most of our economy still depends.

And that brings the final point: transparency.

Oregon was once a leader of transparent government. Nothing is more critical today. If we don't know what's going on, if we don't know who the players are, we can't make informed opinions. That was one of the promises of the current administration. It has not been fulfilled.

Make a contribution, your name goes on it. If you want to buy an ad, fine, but let the rest of us know who foots the bill. An informed populace is a key requirement of democracy, according to Jefferson, ballots are only secret when they go in the box.

To the media: good reporting is not weighing words pro and con in mythical scales of "fairness" and distributing them evenly on page or screen. There is such a thing as truth. Deal with that, take the consequences of doing your best.

If this be a call to class warfare, the lower class did not start the fight. It started when the bankers blew up the economy after telling us to borrow as much as we could, lowering the standards and hiding the consequences. When pharmaceutical companies wrote the Bush prescription act. When Enron had the key to Dick Cheney's office. When Haliburton got the no-bid contract to run the war in Iraq.

But I don't think it is so much "class warfare" as it is "Main Street versus Wall Street." They have taken enough from us, and now it is time to take to our streets, since every other avenue has been closed to us.

The left needs to avoid being shunted downs its favorite side streets, too. There will be time for all that, if we ever get to our destination. That destination, after these several centuries, remains an allegence to "Liberty and Justice for All." We just need to keep focused.