The American Institute for Progressive Democracy

I have been reporting the maneuvers that the Institute has been making in an attempt to get organizations trying to get a constitutional amendment overturning Citizen’s United to work together.  The best present report:  the movement is developing so rapidly and connections already being made between the many players spread around the country that the need for TAIPD’s getting groups and people to sit down together and coordinate their projects has passed.  We are now only one piece in a large game.

While Occupy has shied away from taking specific political positions, there are imbedded in the movement underlying structural concerns. Robert Jenson, a professor at the University of Texas, has identified the following three: Empire, Economics, Ecology.   I will examine these fundamental issues. Today Empire.

Case Study:  how a government entity, a publically owned electric utility,  far outperformed a major private company in an emergency.

What is the Grasshopper doing?  Making music.  The fable involves the conservative idea that Art is a kind of play and not part of what a serious human being would indulge in, namely work.

2012 Feb 4 

GOING FORWARD AND GOING BACK

The terms "liberal" and "conservative" are no longer usefully descriptive in American politics, largely because self-defined conservatives are more liberal toward big business and wealthy individuals than so-called liberals are, and because liberals are trying to conserve nature and existing institutions that serve the 99% more than the so-called conservatives are.

THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE FOR PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRACY (TAIPD) is committed to strengthening and extending democracy, social justice, economic well-being and peace for all peoples, within the context of environmental and economic sustainability. We do so with the belief that the quality of life, in all of its aspects, can be improved for the vast majority of Americans and for the other peoples of the world.
We envision a collaborative society that seeks to build a community in which individuals accept responsibility for the well-being of all.

Through ideas and policy proposals, we work:

• to improve the human condition in our country and the world.
• to renew the American spirit and conscience to provide for freedom from want and fear.
• to foster hope where there is hopelessness and promote the common good.

Through this humane vision and consequent policy proposals, we intend that our work will enhance the national and worldwide conversation and will inspire actions that will implement this vision and create just and sustainable American and world communities.