Dennis Kucinich, populist Democrat, honest and principled. Thank you:

[sabrina 1]

For being one of the few members of Congress who stood up to the Bush administration and publically accused them of torture, back when doing so was practically considered treason.

For opposing the Orwellian Patriot Act, once again when few had the courage to do so.

AND for actually READING IT!

For opposing Bush's illegal and criminal War in Iraq and calling them on their lies, again at a time when it was considered treason to do so.

For all the times you tried to stop the corruption, torture, wars and the lies being told to the American people.

For some memorable moments when you dared to inform the public of what was not meant to be revealed, eg, the clause requiring Iraqis to turn over control of more than 80% of their oil to Global Corporations. For that you were threatened with 'discipline' by your own party.

Proving that Iraq WAS about OIL, despite all the Right Wing denials and claims of Patriotic retribution for 9/11 which as we all know, Iraq had nothing to do with.

And for doing it all for the people during a time when personal tragedy struck your own family more than once.

And so much more ...

And despite all the disappointments for still believing that America will do better.


Dennis Kucinich New Year's Resolutions for America

In 2015 I will observe the 48th anniversary of my public career, which began when I was a 20-year-old candidate for city council. In that time, with the help of many, I have seen miracles occur, outcomes change, new directions taken when people courageously strive to challenge a seemingly unshakeable status quo, on matters both personal and public. I remember well years ago in Cleveland, when a powerful corporate establishment dictated the sale of a city's municipal electric system, yet through a long battle the heroic people of Cleveland, who I was proud to lead as Mayor, regained their rights, and our city's lights.

Today, our nation's government has been taken over by special interest groups and idealogues, who have rapidly distributed our nation's wealth upwards, built a national security state to protect its hold on power and wealth, involved America in destructive, unnecessary wars abroad, ignored the escalating violence at home, and broken the laws of our nation with impunity, while punishing those who expose their unlawfulness.

I hope he's right about miracles happening, because we definitely need them right now.



This is my New Year's vision for our nation:

1. Ensure a full employment economy by reclaiming control of our money system. The US Constitution, in Article I, Section 8, provided Congress with the money power. The monetary system was privatized in 1913 and handed over to private bankers. As a result, we have a debt-based economic system, at the expense of the many, for the profit of a few.

As a Congressman, after years of study, I introduced the NEED Act, which will reclaim our constitutional rights and change monetary policy to ensure full employment, decent wages, housing, healthcare, education, retirement security and a rebuilt infrastructure, without raising taxes. It can be done if we are willing to break the shackles of a falsely constructed economic, social and political reality, which condemns Americans to lives of poverty.

2. Reclaim our right to privacy. In 2001, I voted against the Patriot Act ...because I read it. In 2003, Rep. Ron Paul and I introduced a bill to repeal the Patriot Act, invoking Benjamin Franklin who warned, "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." Let 2015 be the moment when we confront the monstrous NSA, its illegal reach into our private lives, its promotion of self-censorship, and demand that Congress legislate to stop the NSA, once and for all, from treading on our 4th Amendment rights.

3. Make America a more peaceful place. On July 11, 2001, two months before 9/11, I was privileged to give language, form and structure to the hopes of the multitude of people who stand for peaceful societies. On that day, with support from across America, I brought forth a landmark bill to create a Department of Peace, to transform our approach to gun violence, gang violence, racial violence, police-community clashes, domestic violence, spousal abuse, child abuse, violence in the schools, and violence against people based on their sexual orientation.

Let us, in these times of increased violence, restore the dream of "Domestic Tranquility" nourished by President Jefferson and others, and reach a new awareness, a new consensus, to rid our nation of the thinking that violence is inevitable, through supporting the effort, now carried forth by Rep. Barbara Lee.

4. Transform America's role in the world; focus on the needs of people here at home. The US has 662 bases in 38 foreign countries and has been involved militarily in over 100 nations. We have become entangled in wars for resources, wars for domination, wars for geo-political advantage, at a cost of trillions of dollars, driving the national debt and endangering the soul of our nation.

"America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy," said President John Quincy Adams. Let 2015 be the year that we recreate at home an empire of democracy, a true citadel of freedom, and stop the plotting, the interventions, the wars, and the calamitous reach for world domination. This will require a concerted effort, to demand Congress and President Obama stop funding military build-ups, stop funding nuclear escalation, begin to disestablish the global US military empire and start taking care of things at home. Americans are ready.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I travelled to a dozen American cities recently and met with thousands of citizens who re-defined "National Security" in terms of human security - - jobs, health care, education, retirement security, safe communities and privacy.

5. Establish a US Commission on Truth and Reconciliation. America was led into a war against Iraq, a war which killed over 1 million innocent Iraqis, a war which was based on every manner of deceit. In our name, and with our tax dollars, countless people were either killed, injured or tortured, their homes ruined, the land destroyed. It is time for Americans to know the truth about Iraq and other wars. Let us push Congress and the President to create a US Commission on Truth and Reconciliation.

We must require the highest level of accountability from those who have held the highest positions in our government. Lies which took us into war and established a national security state have separated us from each other, and from the world. Let us reunite in the spirit of truth and justice, seeking the moral high ground and a newer world.

6. Restore our relationship with nature and restore our planet. The Philosopher Thomas Berry wrote that "The Great Work" of our lives ought be restoring our relationship with the natural world. As the global temperatures rise, sea levels climb, we are beset by storm clouds of inaction from the poisonous, paralyzing self-interest of inhumane corporations. Nearly a decade ago, when I ran for President, I proposed a "Global Green New Deal" and a "Works Green Administration".

It is for us to gather the knowledge and resources, the strength and determination, to regenerate the soil, protect the land, purify the air, preserve the water, in a ceremony of personal, civic and political engagement which protects and celebrates the natural world as the precondition of life itself.

We can lessen climate disruption by changing the way we grow our food, and restoring our agricultural lands with regenerative organic (agroecological) practices. In doing so, we acknowledge that our food choices have the greatest single impact on our environment, and on our own health.

Let us face the New Year with the confidence that our ability to bring great change depends on our willingness to expect great things of each other and of ourselves. Our current condition of nationhood begs to be re-joined to the visionary confidence of those who 238 years ago announced the birth of a nation and the empowerment of 'we the people'.

Let us summon great courage, and, through the work of our hands and our hearts, create anew the nation which we most desire, one that is blessed with peace, prosperity and justice.

Happy New Year. Welcome, 2015 !

[NYC_SKP]

1. He's on my short list of great living Democrats, he's sorely needed in congress (or higher office).

K/R

[sabrina 1]

3. I agree. I wish we had hundreds like him in Congress.

He has always had a way of saying what people are thinking, only much better. This, eg, is something I know I have asked many times, 'what do they mean by 'National Security'? Dennis answers that question here. I think this is something we should spread around, to make people think of what NS really means and get away from the notion that we are surrounded by enemies just waiting to blow us off the face of the earth.

That is made far more likely by our current foreign policies, than if we adapted Kucinich's policies of doing GOOD around the world, while taking care of our own people right here at home.

44,000 deaths from lack of Health Care? That seemed like a real National Security issue to me.

My wife, Elizabeth, and I travelled to a dozen American cities recently and met with thousands of citizens who re-defined "National Security" in terms of human security - - jobs, health care, education, retirement security, safe communities and privacy.

[Mnemosyne]

2. A man of decency and honor. nt

[mountain grammy]

4. He's one of the very best.

[Enthusiast]

5. Kicked and recommended a whole bunch!

[adieu]

6. I'd like to see him run in 2016

I was supporting him in 2008.

[sabrina 1]

11. Me too, but the US is too regressive for someone like Kucinich at this point.

Maybe if it evolves in the future, people like Kucinich won't be such an aberration.

He is way ahead of his time in the current climate of this country which appears to be going back rather than forward.

[xocet]

7. Hear, hear! K & R! n/t

[Spitfire of ATJ]

8. Still have the bumper sticker.

[pscot]

9. I always though of him as an opportunistic gadfly

Living proof that it is indeed possible to get something for nothing.

[sabrina 1]

10. What gave you that idea? It's true you don't get anything for nothing, Kucinich is

Last edited Sun Jan 4, 2015, 10:45 PM - Edit history (1)

a living example of that.

[pscot]

12. There's a dearth of legislation

with Kucinich's name on it. He could never get anyone to co-sponsor his bills. For as long as he was in DC, he was not a good legislator. And now Roger Ailes signs his pay checks. I love you, Sabrina, but we just disagree on this one.

[sabrina 1]

15. pscot, I love you too, but that is a right wing smear that spread about Kucinich in terms of his

legislative record. I can't count the number of times I had to debunk it by showing that his record was actually normal, and better than some of those we think of as having achieved a lot.

I don't have time right now to dig up all the data but maybe that is something that this group needs to do. To start posting responses to these old smears against some of the best Democrats from the Bush era.

He DID get sponsors for bills and actually got several of his bills to the floor, way more than many others during that period.

The very fact that more of them didn't pass into legislation is NOT a reflection on him. It IS a huge reflection on many of the Dems who served with him, many who voted for BUSH BILLS, such as the Iraq War, The Patriot Act.

They were not there to push Progressive Bills, they were standing in the way of the few good Dems like Kucinich, who worked so hard to try to overcome the Bush/Cheney hold over Congress, both Dems, who were either afraid of them or supported them, and Republicans.

But his record, despite that, including his voting record which is almost impeccable as a Progressive, was pretty good.

Not to mention that most members of Congress don't get bills passed at all. Most don't even get them to the floor.

Their value is that they VOTE in support of legislation that benefits the people. Sadly many Dems who served with Kucinich do not have a very good record on that.

As for his appearances on Fox. He's a very intelligent man and he knows no Progressive Dem like him with what he has to say, will ever be allowed on the Corporate Media.

So, he is using Fox to say what he has to say. And I doubt he's getting much, if anything, for doing so.

He was among the poorest members of Congress. So money has never bought HIS votes.

[pscot]

17. There was a heated argument about this

over at DKos when he signed with Fox, which went nowhere. In some ways Kucinich resembles Alan Grayson. But Kucinich never got under the skin of the Republicans the way Grayson does. Kucinich always seemed calculating to me, whereas Grayson is a passionate crazy who I like a lot. I don't watch Fox so I have no idea what Kucinich does there, but it doesn't seem to have made any waves. Can you imagine Grayson in a similar roll? He'd blow the place up. Happy New Year.

[sabrina 1]

18. Well, I was around mixed forums during the early Bush era and the Right absolutely hated Kucinich.

They had so many epithets to use against him, it's hard to recall all of them at this point. The left, otoh, were thrilled to see how he continually spoke out against the crimes of the Bush cabal..

But around 2004, and Daily Kos at that point was pretty much RUN by Reaganites, and flooded with political operatives who banned every Liberal they could find, that the smears against Kucinich from the Left began.

I guess that confused the rightwingers to some extent, it definitely confused Progressives, so they left it to the so-called 'left'. DK was far from a progressive forum throughout those years. I watched what they did to any liberal, it was worse than anything I saw on the right wing and mixed forums many of us were participating in.

The Third Way were the culprits of course but we didn't know enough then to try to understand why actual Progressives like Kucinich, had suddenly become 'persona non grata' on so-called 'liberal' forums.

I love Grayson also, but you see the attempt HERE to smear him also. Same story, and the sad thing is, it works.

Try posting a Grayson thread and you'll see what I mean.

DK's founder appears to have cut back on his own attacks on Liberals. Maybe because those who weren't banned, eventually left a forum where they were constantly under attack. Money talks.

In fact I remember him attacking Liberals directly in one of his diaries, and when it was pointed out that he didn't mind taking their money, he announced that 'I don't need your money, I am not taking donations from now on'. Apparently he WAS being funded at that time from somewhere else, and you could get banned for asking where the money was coming from.

There must have been a falling out however, because I smiled when I recently got a request from him for donations. I left DK after watching it descend to a place where it was not safe for a liberal to even post there.

[Cosmic Kitten]

13. Department of Peace... what a concept!

[rhett o rick]

14. He is principled and populist, so it's easy to understand why the Oligarch Deep State would

shun him.

[sabrina 1]

16. There was a concerted effort to silence him, smear campaigns were launched against him

and sadly, aided and abetted by some on the 'left'.

Here in this thread is one of the smears that made the rounds when he was attacking the Bush/Cheney gang, right from the floor of Congress.

The one that claimed he was 'ineffective' because he didn't get bills passed.

He WAS effective, which is why they launched these smear campaigns against him.

And he got more legislation to the floor than many of the Dems we viewed as 'effective'.

Also, few members of Congress either get legislation to the floor or even try.

Their value to the people is how they vote on legislation.

Kucinich's record on that, also on sponsoring other members' bills, is exemplary from a Progressive Dem pov.

That smear had to be debunked over and over again, sadly even on Dem forums after a while.

[rhett o rick]

19. A lot of outspoken people on the left have been silenced by one means or another.

Rep Conyers is another one that was outspoken during the Bush Admin. I fear for Sen Warren, Sen Sanders, and Rep Grayson.

[sabrina 1]

20. I know, there is a whole list that USED to be very popular with Dems until the smear campaigns began

Airc, it started around 2004 or a little earlier, and knowing what we now know, I am convinced that it was done to reign in the Left which had huge energy online back then, before they could have any real impact.

Suddenly people like Kucinich were being attacked with stupid words and phrases, Michael Moore always hated by the Right, was suddenly being attacked on 'left' forums with pretty much the same talking points.

Greg Palast, same thing, Conyers, as you pointed out.

Every time a good Liberal Dem gained attention they smear campaigns began.

And now we know the sources of those smears.