Yep, knew about that, but thank you for the depressing summation of Nelson’s perfidy.

Russ,

Susan may not have mentioned it, but Bowers quotes from “The Trap” extensively in his post discussing Susan’s own work. It looks like a helluva book, and it’s on my reading list. And Sam IS good, isn’t he?

So yeah, it needs articulating – it’s time that the GOP stopped being the party of wealth and became the party of hording. It’s time the Dems stopped being seen as the party that serves the have-nots and started being the party that transforms have-nots into haves.

Despite his profound eccentricities, Gore Vidal has pretty much got it right when he claims that the Democratic Party and Republican Party are little more that slightly different wings of the Property Party. In such a society, greed becomes a god to be worshiped rather than a devil to be feared. Regardless of collateral damage, schemes to get ahead are overlooked so long as they don’t become an embarrassment to the status quo.

For thousand of years, the world has only known two classes of people – masters and slaves. Societies crumble when those with more money than brains become the masters. Those at the top of the current social scheme know this. That is why all the concern about what to do with George W. Bush.

Here’s an excerpt from the San Francisco Chronicle review by Alexander Zaitchik (okay, a friend):

“Pam is just one of the book’s examples of people who have ‘sold out to stay afloat’ in post-Reagan America. ‘The Trap’ practically bursts with sympathetic portraits of such ‘sellouts’ — from an aspiring civil rights lawyer who joins a union-busting corporate law firm, to an aspiring queer documentary filmmaker (Yale ’03) who takes a job at Google before running back into the relative security of a doctoral program.”

Another valuable book on the subject is “The Murdering of My Years: Artists and Activists Making Ends Meet” by Michael Zezima.

Aside to Sam: Don’t know if you thought of it, but “if the frame is shifted so that the GOP is the party that stifles opportunity while progressives stand for creating wealth and opportunities for wealth, then there

I wrote about the student loan problem a while back here:

http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2007/05/30/it-pays-to-get-an-education-not-students-of-course-but-lenders/

Strangling the careers and lives of people who want an education is one of the greatest crimes our country currently commits.

Second, I’d add to the list of jobs that would gain one access to the domestic civil service G.I. Bill, teaching in the public schools. If young people knew they’d be able to further their educations by investing, say, 5 years in teaching for the public schools, both they and the schools would benefit.

If you look at his financing by sector, the finance/real estate/insurance sector has given the most to Sen. Nelson by far – $2.5 million since 2000, more than double the next sector – lawyers and lobbyists (at $1.1 million). If you instead look at Sen. Nelson’s donors by industry, the insurance industry is #1 ($1.1M), followed by lawyers and law firms ($806k), health professionals ($367k), securities and investment ($353k), real estate ($349k), and commercial banks ($326k).

If you look into Sen. Nelson’s to 20 individual donors and compare that to this list of the largest student lenders, you find two interesting correlations – Nelnet is Sen. Nelson’s 7th largest individual donor and is 16th on the list of student lenders, and Citigroup is #9 on Nelson’s list and #2 (behind Sallie Mae, which, as a federally-chartered corporation is legally prohibited from giving these kinds of donations to candidates) on the list of student lenders.

I think the frame you describe is already taking effect to some extent, but even the Dems are sabotaging it. Witness Ben Nelson’s attempt to gut the student loan cut bill in favor of retaining corporate subsidies:
http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=245

Instead of the money going to the kids, it’s going to the lenders. And this is a DEMOCRAT doing this. Is it any wonder people see no value in progressivism in general and Dems in particular?

I think this is why themes like education and poverty and opportunity are so important for the Dems. As long as the metanarrative is locked in a frame that sees GOPpers as the party of money and Dems as the party of no money, not much is going to change. But if the frame is shifted so that the GOP is the party that stifles opportunity while progressives stand for creating wealth and opportunities for wealth, then there’s a new dynamism – if you don’t have but you want to have, the path is clear.

But it has to be backed by policy, and it has to start with education. Great schools, with a dominant narrative that learning leads to affluence. And a massive revision of the student loan system, which currently drives a REALITY that education leads to lifelong debt.

This needs to be formalized….