Progressive Hope

DenverPost.com - Dems: Shed corporate cash:
"By John Aloysius Farrell
Post Washington Bureau Chief

Washington

The Democrats may win the November election. They might even take back the White House in 2008.

But unless Democratic office-holders shuck their reliance on corporate cash and return to fighting for working families, says David Sirota, his party will be better off losing.

The nation's capital is steeped in corruption, the progressive polemist says, and replacing corrupted Republicans with corrupted Democrats is no solution at all.

'There is always going to be a big-business party in this country. There always has been,' says Sirota. 'But we have had equilibrium in the past because there has always been a party of the little guy.'

Then, 'big business realized the way to really maximize its agenda was to water down and weaken the counterweight,' Sirota says. Now, he adds, 'about a third to a half of the Democratic Party is complicit' in Republican policies on taxes, energy, job losses, trade and the war in Iraq.

'What we have now is a government working on behalf of the big- moneyed interests who finance political campaigns,' he says. . ."

There is a way to bring the balance. Think of tens of millions of Americans targeting their spending to specific corporations whose policies are progressive. Of course, this is already being done on a small scale by squallers like me. Leadership from someone with a national stage on this issue could balance the corporate greed that is overwhelming both parties.