I have a book to highly recommend, What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk about the Next American Revolution, by Gar Alperovitz, Chelsea Green Publishing.

Here is the beginning of the description of the book at the above link to Amazon’s page for the book.

Never before have so many Americans been more frustrated with our economic system, more fearful that it is failing, or more open to fresh ideas about a new one. The seeds of a new movement demanding change are forming.

But just what is this thing called a new economy, and how might it take shape in America? In What Then Must We Do? Gar Alperovitz speaks directly to the reader about where we find ourselves in history, why the time is right for a new-economy movement to coalesce, what it means to build a new system to replace the crumbling one, and how we might begin. He also suggests what the next system might look like—and where we can see its outlines, like an image slowly emerging in the developing trays of a photographer’s darkroom, already taking shape.

There is a section of the book that suddenly made a light bulb light up in my head.  This is something we could do here in Sturbridge.  This is something that could turn out to be the raison d’être of the little group of progressives that we have here in Sturbidge.

I have copied the following excerpt from my Kindle edition of the book, but you will have to read for your self the parts of the book that surround this excerpt.

As noted, traditional progressive strategy has always tried to focus taxation at the very top to the extent feasible—as a matter both of equity and of good politics (keeping the middle class out of the line of fire and out of the political embrace of the opposition). Let’s keep this in the package. Nothing wrong with it except that it is obviously inadequate—as the ongoing budget, program, salary, and benefit cutting so painfully reminds us.

The longer-term strategic way out of the box, logically, is clearly an approach that rebuilds the local economy (and the local tax base) in ways that are efficient, effective, stable, redistributive, and ongoing. It also should involve capturing greater revenues and profits for municipal use. Which means a different form of development—and a specific plan for how to do it over time so as to secure funds for public-sector employees, teachers, and retirees, and also to secure services for those who need them.

There is a potentially interesting alliance here that can even include local small businesses interested in getting the economy going, and some taxpayers interested in finding new resources to reduce the pressure they face. Not to mention some interesting groups that might act together—including public-sector and teachers’ unions, along with activists who have fought (and rightly continue to fight) the good fight in many areas along traditional lines.

People who see some possibilities in the ideas in the book could get together and strategize on how to raise more interest in the ideas.  We could influence local government to adopt some of these ideas.  I think the seeds are already growing locally.  Perhaps the library could have a book club discussion of these ideas.  Maybe the Senior Center members might take an interest.

There is a wealth of small and medium sized business talent in Sturbridge that is politically active and interested in progressive ideas. I would be willing to bet that I could name a few people around here who probably already know a lot of the ideas put forth in this book.

Certainly our schools, our town, and other local institutions spend a lot of money.  What if we tried to focus some of that spending on improving the local business climate?

Think of the possibilities.  Where do we get started?

The Daily Kos has the article This one revelation in the bombshell Benghazi report from House Republicans will stun and amaze you. Unlike The Daily Kos, I will not try to build up suspense, but will go right to their quote from The Washington Post article Republicans investigating Benghazi blame White House, State Dept. for failures.

While the GOP lawmakers said that commanders could have pushed harder to position forces to respond to threats in North Africa in general and Libya in particular, they concluded that no U.S. military assets could have arrived in Benghazi in time to affect the outcome of the attack, according to committee staff members who briefed reporters on the report.

Of course, this will have no impact on the Republicans continued use of this story to undermine Hillary Clinton.  Fortunately, what the Republicans don’t understand is that if they simply told the truth about Hillary Clinton, she would lose the support of her base in the Democratic party.

Thanks to reader SharonG for suggesting the Pando article The Wolf of Sesame Street: Revealing the secret corruption inside PBS’s news division.

On December 18th, the Public Broadcasting Service’s flagship station WNET issued a press release announcing the launch of a new two-year news series entitled “Pension Peril.” The series, promoting cuts to public employee pensions, is airing on hundreds of PBS outlets all over the nation. It has been presented as objective news on  major PBS programs including the PBS News Hour.

However, neither the WNET press release nor the broadcasted segments explicitly disclosed who is financing the series. Pando has exclusively confirmed that “Pension Peril” is secretly funded by former Enron trader John Arnold, a billionaire political powerbroker who is actively trying to shape the very pension policy that the series claims to be dispassionately covering.
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A stealth takeover of the public airwaves

A billionaire political activist like Arnold exerting financial – and thus ideological – control over PBS news programming is the culmination of a larger campaign by ideological and corporate interests to politicize public broadcasting. As Pando’s Yasha Levine and others have documented, on National Public Radio that campaign has involved the radio network promoting politically skewed coverage of political front groups and corporate interests that are now permitted to finance NPR’s journalism. That trend shows no sign of abating under NPR’s new CEO, who came to the job after a career as a financial-industry lobbyist, Republican Party benefactor and board member of corporate-financed conservative think tanks.

On PBS, the campaign has been even more intense. During fights over funding for public broadcasting during the Bush era, one FCC official told the Washington Post that under withering pressure from conservative ideologues and corporate special interests, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting became “engaged in a systematic effort not just to sanitize the truth, but to impose a right-wing agenda on PBS.”

I have known that ever since Congress started pressuring PBS to have more balance (meaning more right-wing content), that PBS is no longer the source of truthful information that it was. With Congress holding part of the purse strings, what else could PBS do? It now seems that the congressional pressure has even reached the choice of CEO for NPR.