Democratic Hamiltonians?: Who is Continuing to Play Working Americans for Fools?

Does Alexander Hamilton really offer the kind of policy solutions the Democratic party needs to address the terrible situation working Americans have been placed in by several decades of unfettered globalization?

According to the Brookings Institution's Hamilton Project, Alexander Hamilton is the icon of all good things....

As I have previously written, however, Democrats concerned about the future of working Americans may seriously question whether Hamilton and Bob Rubin hold the Democratic policy key to our economic futures....

And I was glad to see that the Washington Post's editorial writer Harold Meyerson noted some of these same problems with the "Hamilton Project" in a column on April 19.

I also note that David Sirota, author of the new book Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government--and How We Take It Back, has also previously criticized the Hamilton Project for the way it betrays, rather than furthers, the real democratic project of creating a nation where all Americans can work together to prosper in a peaceful and sustainable world.

Cheers to David Sirota and Harold Meyerson for helping to point out the false policy direction in which the dominant leadership of the Democratic party would like to continue to take us.

And this is why, so long as democratic citizens allow the Democratic party to continue to be governed by this tired old policy elite, which is more beholden to the interests of globalization and the furtherance of their own wealth, than to the common good of the American people, there will continue to be so little difference between the alternatives offered by our two political parties.

If we want to fight the corruption and betrayal of the futures of all Americans represented by both our parties, it is time to choose not only new party representation, but new policy ideas, in November. But especially let's throw out the bums in the Democratic party who continue to offer such tired and limited policy alternatives.

As long as the policy ideas represented by the Democratic Party continue to offer no new vision of democratic possibility for the majority of working Americans, the great number of voters who could turn the political tide of this country in November will continue to question whether their vote for one or the other side of the Demorepublicans will make any difference. And because Americans are not stupid, we should not expect a groundswell for change to develop on the side of a renewed Democratic party unless the Democrats can prove that they have a truly new Policy Vision to fight for in November and beyond.

Without a new Policy Vision that addresses how the Democrats will deal more effectively with the terrible problems facing this country because of Global Warming, the disastrous foreign policy of the War in Iraq, and the ineffective strategies for dealing with the challenges of immigration, poverty, and health insurance in the US, we should expect many Americans to continue to doubt that either Party will serve them well. And, of course, this is the status quo the leadership of both parties would prefer. So long as doubt and apathy continue to divide and cloud the minds of the democratic majority who have the power to throw out this uninspired and narrowly self-interested leadership, this tired old leadership will remain in power, and will continue to use its power to do what they have been doing--

We need a new Democratic Party with a true alternative Agenda that represents the interests and needs of all working Americans, rather than the interests and needs of the plutocrats who hope to keep control of both parties in the name of protecting the future of a version of globalization that will continue to make them rich on the backs of the working people of the US and the rest of the world.

Let's win our democracy and our policy back to the service of the working people of this country--by electing only those who will fight for us and our interests, rather than against us, even as they pretend to be "Democrats" but wear the policy clothing of the plutocrats they most truly represent.

So "Hear ye, Hear ye," oh Bob Rubin, and all who think an old Federalist like Hamilton is the best symbol for a Democratic economic policy for the twenty-first century--

We, the democratic people of the United States, can and must do better than this! But to do better for ourselves and each other collectively, we must create, together, a new Policy Vision and Agenda that will serve the interests of all Americans....

This is the work, and the challenge, we have ahead of us in the coming months. For if we cannot create a clear alternative agenda, and shape a new Democratic Party able to fight for such an agenda, it will make little difference which Party wins the elections in November....

Countering the Lies Directed Against the Pro-Immigrant Protests

As the marches and rallies of the last two days have demonstrated, this past month's democratic mobilization of public support for just immigration and immigrant policy in the United States has been hugely successful. This mobilization has been spearheaded by Latino citizens, and has been supported and embraced by citizens of all ethnicities across the country who understand that, as many signs declared, "We are All Immigrants," or "Immigrants are America."

In the face of this democratic mobilization, the reactionary political forces that seek to create fear of immigrants in American society have been spreading misinformation about the basic objectives of this democratic movement. Opponents of this movement are seeking to attack its democratic basis by saying it seeks to defy the law or "undermine" the U.S. middle-class.

However, far from defying law or undermining the economic prosperity of this country's middle-class (Bush administration policies have been doing much of this without any help from immigrants), this pro-immigrant movement is an expression of this country's best democratic traditions of mass mobilization in support of creating just laws and humane policies that will safeguard the well-being of all Americans while also securing the foundation for our future democratic prosperity--

To help counter the misinformation campaign of the fear-mongerers, today's Progress Report of the Center for American Progress responds to the myths directed against the democratic Movement for Immigrant Justice:

*****
For Countering the Misinformation Being Spread about the Pro-Immigrant Movement for Justice and Democracy in the U.S.:

From American Progress Action:

Yesterday, hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Boston, New York, Atlanta, Washington, DC, and other cities turned out for the National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. The "scope and size of the marches have astonished politicians on Capitol Hill as well as the churches and immigrant advocacy groups organizing the demonstrations." The rallies were "largely festive rather than angry," but that has not stopped the right wing from turning its sights onto the protesters. As people took to the streets, right-wing chatter about the marches has been "burning up the airwaves on talk radio and cable news networks and has appeared in Internet blogs and conservative publications." Their myths have already begun to spread. The Progress Report does a fact-check:

MYTH #1 - RALLIES MEANT TO 'BLOCK ANY EFFORTS TO SECURE OUR BORDERS': In the face of yesterday's massive protests, CNN anchor Lou Dobbs continued to use a straw man argument to defend his radical positions on immigration and attack the peaceful protesters. "The marchers and demonstrators [are] also trying to block any effort to secure our borders," he declared. "They want to defeat efforts in Congress to secure our borders." The truth is that many of the demonstrators support comprehensive reform with strong border enforcement. The catalyst that "sparked protests nationwide" was HR 4437, the House bill sponsored by Judiciary Committee Chairman James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) and passed last December by the House. That draconian "enforcement-only" bill contains "sweeping language" that "would make giving even humanitarian assistance" to undocumented workers a "crime punishable by up to five years in prison." The bill does not contain other components of real, comprehensive immigration reform, including stricter penalties for businesses who hire undocumented workers and a path for undocumented immigrants to obtain legal status. "We want to stop HR4437," said one protest organizer, "and we are demanding the Senate go back to the drawing board and develop an immigration reform bill and really fix the problem." Even in the face of the protests, the right wing is not backing down. "I don't think we ought to be talking about a more comprehensive approach," House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) said Sunday.

MYTH #2 - ALL THE PROTESTERS ARE MEXICAN: To fuel anti-immigrant sentiment, some commentators are labeling all those attending the rallies as "Mexican." Last week, Fox News's John Gibson said cities would be hosting "major demonstrations by Mexican-Americans and Mexican immigrants...carrying the Mexican flag." Gibson would be surprised by the thousands of immigrants from around the world who came out to protest. While the crowds were "mostly Latino," "people representing other ethnic groups also participated." In New York, "the thousands who converged at City Hall Park were greeted in Spanish, Chinese, French and Korean, and heard invocations by a rabbi and the leader of a Buddhist temple." "Yes, we were strangers in this strange land," said Boston City Councilor and Korean-American Sam Yoon, "but now we are part of this land and we are proud to be here." Alan Coleman, a teacher in Washington, DC, held a sign "decorated with green shamrocks" that read, "We Were All Immigrants Once."

MYTH #3 - THERE'S A 'TRUE DIFFERENCE' BETWEEN PROTESTERS AND 'THOSE THAT BUILT THIS COUNTRY': Rep. Mac Collins (R-GA) summed up the view from the radical right when he wrote on the RedState blog that "there is a true difference between those protestors filling the streets today and those that built this country." Collins argued that, unlike the protesters, "immigrants like our forefathers embraced the American dream." But the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson points out that "many fully enfranchised Latino citizens" took part in the protests, many of whom turned out to represent family members, friends, and their cause. Latino military vets were also present at the rallies to show their support. "We just want what's fair for us and good for this country," one Hunter College student said. "We've been Americans all our lives. We know the Star Spangled Banner and we don't know the Argentine national anthem. We pay our taxes and we want to contribute to this country, which is the only place we know."

MYTH #4 - PROTESTERS CAME OUT TO 'INTIMIDATE': "I'm going to have probably several thousand people outside my office today in New York," Rep. Pete King (R-NY). "I mean, you can't allow that to intimidate you." Meanwhile, the "marches were peaceful, and many of them had a picnic-like atmosphere." The Associated Press described them as "peaceful protests that some compared to the movements led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and farm-labor organizer Caesar Chavez." In fact, many on the right have been trying to intimidate the protesters. Fox News asked if rallies were the "perfect chance to arrest illegal immigrants." Rush Limbaugh wondered if his listeners were asking, "'Where's the INS? ... Some of you might say, 'Surround them with INS agents.'" Radio host Brian James of KFYI in Arizona even recently threatened to "randomly pick one night - every week - where we will kill whoever crosses the border."

National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice

After yesterday's marches and rallies, which included what police estimated as 500,000 people in Dallas alone (see front-page article in today's NY Times), today is the National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice. Today's actions may prove to be the largest mobilization in support of immigrant rights in the nation's history:

Massive Marches Planned for Today's National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice

Marches, rallies and demonstrations are planned for more than 75 cities in 29 states including Arkansas, Pennsylvania, Oregon, North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, Connecticut and Colorado. The largest solidarity marches are expected in California, Texas, Florida, and Texas.

Immigrants and their allies are marching to oppose the harsh anti-immigrant House bill HR 4437, and to demand just and humane immigration reform that is comprehensive, respects civil rights, reunites families, protects workers, and offers a path to citizenship for the current 11 million undocumented workers who came to the US to fill jobs offered by the US business community.

A primary rally is set for Washington DC, the home of the National Capitol Immigrant Coalition, a sponsor of today's National Day of Action for Immigrant Justice, along with the Immigrant Solidarity Network, and hundreds of grassroots organizations across the country.


About the April 10 Day of Action

The plan for the April 10 Day of Action came from the grassroots. The National Capital Immigrant Coalition – a coalition of immigrant, labor, faith, civil rights and business community groups in the metro, Washington, DC area – and allies around the nation, developed the concept of a National Day of Action. Their good idea caught on like wildfire and today hundreds of local grassroots organizations and coalitions are working together in cities all over America to make our voices heard.

For months, the incredible energy and organizing talent within immigrant communities has been leading the national news. Communities that have lived in the shadows and in fear are now speaking out about how America's broken immigration system regularly rips families apart, creates the conditions for gross workplace and civil rights violations, and fuels a political climate where being “anti-immigrant” is considered by some politicians to be a winning strategy.

Immigrant communities are coming together on April 10 to proudly declare that “We Are America” and that immigration reform must not violate the American values that we cherish. In cities from coast-to-coast, immigrants, families and friends will gather, tell our own personal stories, demand political action and contribute our energy and talents to the growing movement for immigrant justice.

Our goal is to stop anti-immigrant legislation from becoming law and to pass real, comprehensive immigration reform that provides a clear path to citizenship, unites families, and ensures workplace and civil rights protections for all.

You can help support immigrant families on April 10 by:

-Learning about events in your community.
-Making a donation to help support April10.org and the movement for immigrant justice.
-Signing the petition for immigrant rights--

Petition to Congress:

I believe that Congress should pass real, fair and comprehensive immigration
reform that:

1) Respects my values of fairness, hard work, and family

2) Provides a clear path to earned citizenship for immigrants living in
America today

3) Fixes America’s immigration system to make it safe, legal and orderly

4) Unites families

5) Ensures workplace and civil rights protections for everyone

I am opposed to immigration legislation that includes unworkable and immoral provisions. Proposals – such as arresting and deporting 11 million men, women and children to nations all over the world – are simply unworkable and run against the American values that I cherish.

America’s broken immigration system is not working for new immigrants and citizens alike. It is time for Members of Congress to show real leadership and pass real, fair and comprehensive immigration reform now.

*****
This petition may be downloaded for signatures, and the www.april10.org website provides additional information to support mobilization efforts.

For overview and background on the uprising of action for justice on immigrant rights, see yesterday's feature article in the Washington Post.

Progressive Principles for Immigration Reform

The Debate on Immigration Reform
(Adapted from Unionhispana.Org)

In both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, there are competing proposals for immigration legislation ranging from comprehensive fixes that address nearly all parts of our broken system, to enforcement-only models that would do little to remedy the underlying problems.

After piecing together a compromise bill over the past week, the Senate failed to pass the bill yesterday, which means our elected politicians are heading back to their constituents for their spring break without an immigration reform bill. NOW is the time to contact and talk with your representatives to make sure they go back to Washington with an ear full of your voices advocating progressive principles for immigration reform.

Below is a description of the principles that should guide immigration reform.

Please contact your representatives to let them know that you want real solutions that respect our history as a nation of immigrants. Building walls against immigrants is a disgrace to not only our history as a nation of immigrants, but to all that immigrants have done to make this country's economy grow.

Principles for Immigration Reform:

1) Must be comprehensive: Deal with all aspects of the broken system.

2) Provide a path to citizenship: Reject temporary ‘guestworker’ plans in favor of those that promote integration and full participation in U.S. society for those who qualify.

3) Protect all workers’ rights: Meet employers’ needs for workers, but not at the expense of U.S. and other immigrant workers; Meaningfully enforce labor protections.

4) Reunite families: Reduce the backlogs to bring families back together.

5) Restore the rule of reasonable law and enhance security for all: Provide effective, humane border and interior enforcement, combined with realistic reforms, to make us all safer.

6) Promote citizenship/civic participation and help local communities: Create opportunities to learn English, prepare for citizenship, and support immigrant families and local communities during times of demographic change.

OUR NEED FOR A NEW POLICY VISION

After Katrina, I reacted to what I witnessed on the TV screen with a deep sense of betrayal because I recognized that the deaths we were witnessing were not the result of any natural disaster, but a disaster of our own making--a disaster of government stemming from a long-developing failure of policy vision and policymaking. The voices of the people abandoned to death or hunger after Katrina screamed of the failures of policy and political vision that had been preparing this disaster for many long years.

These same policies, along with the shallow policy vision of both political parties that informs them, will continue to prepare many disasters to come until we, as citizens, change our government's vision, along with its policy of wilful blindness and neglect toward the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens.

I take our current and ongoing failures of government initiative personally because I know we can do better, in this culturally and materially wealthy country, than this. We not only can do better, we must do better--if we want a future for this country that will be worthy of what the citizens of this country have to offer each other and the rest of the world.

Michael Eric Dyson's recently-published book, Come Hell or High Water: Hurricane Katrina and the Color of Disaster begins by discussing the long history of our nation's blindness to the structural politics of race and class, and the short-sighted practices of policymaking, which long before August 2005 paved the way for the disastrous response to Katrina (which continues seven months later).

Most valuable in Dyson's opening chapter "Unnatural Disasters" is his look beyond the immediate failures of government to the failures of citizenship and civic responsibility that made the response failures not only possible, but inevitable. Dyson underlines the naivete of the majority of white middle-class and wealthy Americans who were surprised to see their government leave behind the most vulnerable poor and black citizens of Louisiana and Mississippi. And he indicts the culture of "blissful ignorance" that keeps so many Americans "deliberately naive about the poor while dodging the responsibility that knowledge of their lives would entail."

Dyson goes to the heart of the matter when he underlines the blissful escape from responsibility embodied in the framing of what happened to the Gulf Coast six months ago as a "natural disaster."

"We are thus able to decry the circumstances of the poor while assuring ourselves that we had nothing to do with their plight. . . . We are fine as long as we place time limits on the origins of the poor's plight--the moments we all spied on television after the storm, but not the numbing years during which we all looked the other way. But we fail to confront our complicity in their long-term suffering. By being outraged, we appear compassionate. This permits us to continue to ignore the true roots of their condition, roots that branch into our worlds and are nourished on our political and religious beliefs" (4).

Dyson then notes simply this basic fact: "There are 37 million people in poverty in our nation, 1.1 million of whom fell below the poverty line in 2004."

Meanwhile, as we all know, our federal government has dedicated itself for more than four years now to enriching the wealthiest among us with tax cuts, while cutting what little remains of the social safety net of government programs that were created once upon a time when the citizens of this country still understood what it meant to use government as a common instrument for helping all Americans to share with each other the responsibilities and privileges of being citizens.

As I have watched the political blame game play itself out over the last seven months in Washington, my long-developing fears and despair about the future of this country have only been compounded. I fear we now live in a country where the most advantaged individuals, who have gained the most from living and doing business in this country, no longer feel they owe any duty or responsibility to either their fellow citizens, or the social infrastructure (which includes public health), that has made their success and wealth possible. Why else would they accept increasing tax cuts while the least advantaged of their fellow citizens go without health care and fight their wars overseas? And based on the way those with the most power in our society and government have been devoting ever-increasing fractions of the tax dollars some of us pay (along with the lives or our fellow citizens) to fighting wars overseas while ignoring the poverty and suffering that increases among our own fellow citizens, I have lost faith in our current national "leadership" (of both parties).

One of my hopes in the future of this country is that we can learn to allow Katrina to teach us how to become citizens of a common country. 9/11, for all its trauma, and for all the media-inspired celebrations of patriotism that followed, apparently failed to do this. Otherwise we would not be allowing our government leaders to continue to abandon our fellow citizens as we have been since 9/11. While near 3000 died that day, how many more of our citizens have died since then of poverty and lack of access to proper health care? How many more have died from despair at watching their government leaders talk of promoting democracy in the rest of the world while the most basic of human services are denied them at home?

And by abandoning our fellow citizens, I mean not just those from the Gulf Coast, but those 37 million in poverty (including the 1.1 million new poor in 2004), and the 46 million of our fellow citizens without health insurance, all over this country, who are suffering because of a national policy of wilful neglect and failure. Until we all, as citizens of this country, take responsibility for summoning the collective will to create a government and a policy structure worthy of the people of the United States, I will continue to live in despair of this country's future--for the poverty of other Americans is my poverty. Until we begin as a nation to understand and feel the poverty of others as our own, we will not escape our current national state of spiritual impoverishment. And this spiritual impoverishment is already showing its very material hand.

For no matter how much American citizens like to criticize their government when it does badly, and take it for granted when it serves us well, our government and our policy are what we make of them, for better or worse for all of us. Our government's failures (at local, state, and federal levels) to serve the most vulnerable of our fellow citizens only underline our own failures as citizens to create the kind of government that will not leave our fellow citizens (us) behind in their (our) times of need--

And so I continue to take our ongoing failures of government policy and vision personally. We can do better, in this rich country, than this. We owe it to ourselves and to each other, as citizens, to make sure our government does better in the future. We owe it to ourselves and each other to join together as citizens to demand new political vision and new policy frameworks for addressing the suffering of our fellow citizens.

Lest we make the mistake of thinking that doing better for the citizens of the Gulf Coast would demand that we all become selflessly noble and philanthropic, we need simply to remember that a country filled with increasing numbers of poor and impoverished people, without hope, and living in despair, can not long continue to be a prosperous and successful country on any level. We should demand of ourselves that we do better for the citizens of the Gulf Coast because one day we will depend on the citizens of the Gulf Coast to do their part to help the rest of us in our time of need. This is the meaning of citizenship in common.

The great Mississippi flood of 1927, and the government failures of response after it, preceded the Great Depression by only a few years. But the market, policy, and political failures that brought on the Depression were already firmly in place by 1927. One need only compare the economic policies of Coolidge during the 1920s to those of today to begin to see the much larger failure toward which we may be heading in an era which seems to think there is little reason to pay attention to the lessons the history of the past century of human market failure and war might have to teach us.

A country of people too self-involved to summon the collective will to demand that its government insure the health and well-being of ALL its citizens can hardly serve as a good model of democracy to the rest of the world. Such a country has only a poor future ahead of it. The future we help (or do not help) to build in the Gulf Coast will mirror the future we are building (or not) for the rest of the country. Perhaps the best way we can begin, as a people, to earn back the respect of the rest of the world for this country is to show that we can insure the well-being of our own fellow citizens, beginning with those on the Gulf Coast.

A DAY IN SUPPORT OF IMMIGRANTS!

MONDAY APRIL 10 2006

PLEASE SHARE THIS INFORMATION WITH YOUR FAMILY, RELATIVES, FRIENDS, NEIGHBORS, AND CO-WORKERS

MARCH or BOYCOTT for Immigrant Rights!!!

IMMIGRANTS WORK!

Our Immigration System Doesn't!

MORE THAN 12 MILLION UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS IN THE U.S.A. DESERVE DIGNITY, RESPECT, AND SHOULD BE RECOGNIZED FOR THEIR HARD WORK, EFFORT AND THEIR PARTICIPATION IN U.S. ECONOMIC GROWTH

Support Comprehensive Immigration Reform

That is FAIR!!

UNION HISPANA , UNION HISPANA DE TELLURIDE,

AND SEVERAL CIVIC GROUPS IN FAVOR OF A COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM ARE CALLING YOU TO JOIN AND SUPPORT:

A GENERAL STOPPAGE

AND ECONOMIC BOYCOTT

IN PROTEST

OF THOSE ANTI-IMMIGRANT BILLS THAT, IN CASE OF BEING APPROVED, WILL AFFECT MORE THAN 12 MILLION UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR FAMILIES

"A DAY WITHOUT HISPANICS"
MONDAY APRIL 10 2006

YOU CAN PARTICIPATE BY:

-DRESSING IN WHITE
-HANG A WHITE SHEET ON YOUR DOOR
-PINNING A WHITE RIBBON ON YOUR CHEST
-NOT GOING TO SCHOOL THAT DAY
-COPY, PRINT AND SHARE THIS FLYER WITH FRIENDS, FAMILY, REALTIVES & NEIGHBORS
-JOIN WITH AN ORGANIZATION OF A WALK-OUT IN YOUR CITY
-NOT GOING TO WORK THAT DAY (SPEND THAT DAY WITH YOUR FAMILY)
-NOT USING PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION (BUSES, TAXIS, SUBWAYS, TRAINS, ETC. )
-NOT GOING TO PUBLIC PLACES (MOVIE THEATERS, RESTAURANTS, BARS, ETC.)
-NOT BUYING GASOLINE
-NOT GOING TO SUPERMARKETS (WAL-MART, CITY MARKETS, PRICE, COSTCO, ETC.)
-NOT SHOPPING AT ALL
-CONTACTING YOUR SENATORS AND/OR CONGRESSMEN, ASKING THEM TO SUPPORT A COMPREHENSIVE IMMIGRATION REFORM


UNION HISPANA DE TELLURIDE
325 Coonskin Court Suite F12, P.O.Box 3278 Telluride, Co. 81435.
Phone: (970)-417-9634.
http://unionhispana.org

Is the "Hamilton Project" a Sign of What It Means for Democrats to Transcend "Tired Ideologies" in 2006?

I sincerely hope not--

The new Brookings Institution Hamilton Project Nicely Illustrates One of the Primary Reasons We Need a Genuinely Different Framework for Constructing a Democratic Policy Agenda for the 2006 Elections. This "Project" also suggests why the Democratic Party Agenda we need should not be determined by those who seek to transcend "tired ideologies" by reproducing them--which is so far what the official policy framework of the Democratic Party, structured around the tired old themes of "Security, Opportunity, and Responsibility" seems to be doing:

According to an article posted today on MSNBC, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary Robert Rubin has launched a new (?!) economic policy project named, of all things, the Hamilton Project. Perhaps the creators of this Brookings Institution "Project" were a bit too overtaken by the heroic portrayal of this "founding father" by last year's New York Historical Society Hamilton exhibit. Whatever the source of the seduction, the choice of Hamilton as the name for a new Democratic Party policy initiative demonstrates just how Orwellian current understandings of democratic policy seem to have become within both the Democratic and Republican parties. (Either that, or Rubin and the Brookings Institution have developed a wonderfully ironic sense of humor. Now that would be something new!)--

The key question is: Do Rubin and the Brookings Institution have such a shallow historical sensibility, or do they expect American citizens to be so dull as to let pass unnoticed the irony of the fact that Alexander Hamilton was a Federalist whose economic policies were almost universally opposed by the first democrats of the United States, including Thomas Jefferson? Hamilton was reviled by democrats during the 1790s because his economic policies favored the wealthy over the working poor to such an extent that these policies stirred up one of the first major armed insurrections of US history--the Pennsylvania Whiskey Rebellion).

And in case this little historical irony is not enough to suggest how severely distorted is the vision of "democratic" policy underlying this new Democratic Party economic vision that would, according to Barack Obama, transcend "tired ideologies," we should note that the first "white paper" produced by this Hamilton Project warns that rising economic inequality "risks a backlash that can threaten the very stability of democratic capitalism itself."

The virtue of this warning, of course, is that it clearly underlines the primary concern of this revisionary Hamiltonian-style economic policy: "the stability of democratic capitalism." This critical anxiety about a backlash against capitalism is perhaps what makes the Hamilton Project quite apt to designate the policy priority of both this project and the Democratic party under leaders like Rubin: They recognize with great anxiety the ways in which the glaring inequalities being produced by current economic policies may produce "backlash," or political rebellion against the priorities of both ruling political parties. Hamilton Project indeed!

As an antidote to this growing inequality, Rubin and the Brookings Institution propose the Hamilton Project?! As if Hamilton was somehow a symbol for having successfully countered political backlash in the 1790s? (Well, Hamilton did indeed support the first use of federal military force against US citizens under the Federal Constitution to suppress the Whisky Rebellion--so perhaps he is a good symbol for countering political backlash--the question is: Is this the kind of symbol and policy the Democratic Party wants for its standard?!).

As it was in Hamilton's time, so perhaps in ours--When capitalism is under threat, democracy must yield, and thus is revealed the fundamental weakness of the Hamiltonian/Rubin vision of what appears to be an increasingly oxymoronic phrase under the coercive forces of capitalist globalization: "democratic capitalism." (Fortunately, French citizens have been showing us over the past week that democratic citizens of a self-respecting democracy do not need to concede all their freedoms and liberties to the coercive force of capitalist policy transformation imposed from above)

Is a new globalizing Hamiltonianism really the shape of the "new" economic policy vision we want for the Democratic Party? Those who have been paying attention to the news will have noticed that globalizing capitalism has been the policy of both our political parties for quite some time now. The adoption of Hamilton as a new Democratic standard-bearer against the irrationally extreme economic policy of the Republican party, which threatens to destabilize the progress of globalizing capitalism, may be the clearest sign yet of the fundamental policy vision that informs the elite handlers of the Democratic Party.

If the citizens of the United States want a different kind of Democratic policy to govern them in the future--something other than this new old Hamiltonianism--it is time we get about the work of Building a New Democratic Party and Policy from the ground up--guided by a grassroots democratic vision that can successfully live up to Barack Obama's challenge: Democratic policy should truly transcend, rather than reproduce, "tired ideologies." And, as even Robert Rubin recognizes, a Democratic Party policy worth its name should be "diametrically opposed to the current policy regime." Creating a workable alternative regime will require us to move beyond dear old Alexander Hamilton....