Here it comes again. This holiday weekend we'll see a lot of media coverage of Martin Luther King, Jr. But we'll hear very little about what he really was -- a brave and visionary leader whose vision is as relevant today as ever.

One year ago I listed ten quotes by Dr. King, and mourned the lack of a movement that would advance his kind of vision. Then came the uprising in Madison and the Occupy movement, which began a long-overdue national debate about economic, as well as racial inequality.

Once again, Dr. King's insights offer insight and vision for today's movement activists -- and tomorrow's.

1. "True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring." Where Do We Go From Here? August 1967 speech.

"Bain Capitalism" - a.k.a "vulture capitalism" -- didn't happen out of nowhere. It was made by politicians. It should be un-made by politicians. The system is the problem and it needs to change.

A long list of corporations and banks enriched itself by triggering the events that led to the Great Recession, and many of them took Federal bailout money when it happened. Each of them has a Corporate Social Responsibility policy, designed to show they're good citizens who give back to the community. And each of them has a fleet of lobbyists working to protect their privileged status and tax benefits.

Meanwhile the poverty rate, which had been declining, started to rise again in 2000. That year it stood at 11.3 percent, but by 2009 the Census Bureau reported that it had climbed back to 14.3 percent. At last count, 46 million Americans lived in poverty, more than 15 percent of the population. More than 16 million of them are children, which means that nearly one in four American kids (22 percent) is living in poverty.

Is that OK with you?

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Ignore the obvious Fox spin from Gretchen Carlson and the Washington Examiner guy who thinks Paul Ryan walks on water in this clip and listen to Jim Kessler from Third Way tell us that the "Gang of Six" compromise which hasn't been reached, hasn't been unveiled and contains no specifics is the "only game in town."

This stuff drives me crazy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is this notion that we'll "all hate it", which means we should "all like it." It drives me crazy mostly because it suggests that there are no real creative ways to look at deficit reduction and begins with the presumption that taxes cannot be raised to deal with the deficit.

Here are the Senators who comprise the Gang of Six: Mark Warner (D-Va.), Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.)

Does anyone really think a group that includes Coburn, Crapo, and Chambliss will arrive at a compromise that involves a tax increase? I certainly don't.

My problem with Third Way is where they start. They frame the entire debate by calling the progressive approach "Soak the Rich" and the conservative approach "Starve the Beast." Neither are accurate, given that progressives have argued for fairness in the tax code and not a soaking, while conservatives aren't as interested in starving beasts as they are in shifting where the beast is fed and who feeds it.

While they haven't unveiled specific ideas yet, it seems clear that they're already pushing for their plan to be the only plan that makes sense, and to cut off debate -- an option I find unacceptable. The Progressive Caucus has ideas that make sense, and are not "soaking" the rich as much as they are a way to make tax burdens fair to all -- corporations, middle class, and wealthy alike.

The entire debate is being framed too widely at this point, anyway. Social Security should come off the table, except to the extent that the payroll tax is adjusted as the original formula intended. The tax code needs to be overhauled. In my view, any deficit reduction package that amends the tax code as it exists today is not reform, since it's loaded with sunset provisions, obscure tax breaks for one or two companies all over it, and other inconsistent and mostly unintelligible footnotes that give billions away to the high-end earners.

Going on Fox & Friends and telling viewers it's our way or no way is not a third way. It's just what conservatives do on a near-daily basis. Surely we can do better than that.

We've been hearing a lot lately about Third Way, and their helpful DLC-clone suggestions for our economic future. They just released a "progressive" proposal to fix Social Security -- and it's amazing similar to what the corporatists have wanted all along. I guess they figure we'll swallow anything if we stick a "progressive" label on it. Daniel Marans:

Progressives really owe Third Way a debt of gratitude. Finally, some austerity hawks that come clean about the true intentions of their proposals to cut Social Security. Unlike Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, who were shamed into insisting that their proposed cuts were only for the purpose of “strengthening Social Security,” in their report, "Saving Social Security," Jim Kessler and David Kendall from Third Way effectively admit that cutting Social Security should be a part of deficit reduction.

You see, Third Way would have us shore up Social Security’s finances with a package that is two-thirds cuts and one-third revenue increases. They must have known this is just a wee bit unbalanced, especially for a capital “D” Democratic think tank like theirs, because they feel the need to justify it throughout the paper. They explain that we need to free up the revenue from Social Security for other purposes:

In a vacuum, we could in theory continue raising payroll taxes to keep up with the baby boom retirement. But those tax and spending decisions affect the entire U.S. economy and budget. Left unchecked, these trends will leave a small portion of our federal budget devoted to education, innovation, infrastructure and national defense, squeezing our badly needed public investments and jeop¬ardizing our security. To avert this coming crisis, Social Security reform must be achieved principally through savings in benefits, not tax increases, as we seek to rebalance the long-term U.S. budget toward investments and economic growth.

Well, there you have it: the massive debt just ties our hands. Even though Social Security does not contribute a penny to the debt, and is forbidden by law from borrowing from the general budget, we need the money that currently goes toward it to pay down the deficit--supposedly so we can increase or maintain spending on other programs. There is apparently some magic line above which taxes cannot rise, and honoring our commitment to American workers no longer fits within that line.

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Thomas Friedman never fails to disappoint with his "Third Way" bulls*it. In his mind what America needs now is a 'radical center" to change the course of politics. You see, Obama hasn't bent over backwards enough to a phony crisis called the debt ceiling even when he offered up trillions of dollars of spending cuts to the GOP with a 3-1 ratio and after being rebuked---sweetened the pot by throwing in our social safety nets, even when the debt ceiling has always been a pro forma vote.

As of Sunday night, Republicans have refused to agree to anything because they won't even add revenues by closing idiotic tax loopholes for millionaires. Norquist rules the GOP roost. Friedman's own NY Times colleague, David Brooks, called the Tea Party an insane caucus asylum because of the deal they've passed up. Most Villagers love this kind of talk too. Meet The Press' roundtable cavalcade of stars made quite a deal about the partisan divide and longings for the good old days where centrism ruled, majority leaders got what they wanted and where insane people weren't holding the America political system hostage.

MTP Transcript:

MS. MITCHELL: And in fact, there is some criticism that is, that is probably warranted, that the White House was pretty much silent on that. Simpson and Bowles came together, there was the Rivlin group. There have been several documents, including the Gang of Six, although Democratic leaders in the Senate certainly viewed the Gang of Six coming out with another document this week as unhelpful because it changed the trajectory of the conversation.

MAYOR BOOKER: But give Obama some credit, though. He's being attacked, not just by the Republicans, he's being attacked by his own wing by standing up and saying, "You know what, there's got to be a pragmatic principled center."

MS. MITCHELL: Well, now he is.

MAYOR BOOKER: Right.

MS. MITCHELL: I'm just saying that there was a moment there back when, initially, that commission would've had enforcement if Republicans hadn't bolted. So the president was left with the problem of creating a commission which had no enforcement mechanism, had no staffing, basically, and eventually did come out with a product which at least was a taking off point. The president did not jump in at that point, is the criticism. That said, the president and John Boehner are now clearly are looking to independent swing voters, the healthy middle and disgusted middle of the country, and were looking to try to bring their groups along. But they didn't have the power to try to get liberal/progressive Pelosi Democrats, however you want to phrase them, in the House to accept...

MR. GREGORY: Let...

MS. MITCHELL: ...the really tough entitlement cuts up front and more importantly, probably, John Boehner couldn't get the House caucus.

MR. GREGORY: Doris, let me ask you, I mean, the conversation also extends to if there's--if the left and the right are taking over, is there room in the center. You raised this when we were talking over the weekend. Tom Friedman in his column in The New York Times today has this as a headline, "Make way for the radical center. A third way is now on the way." Is it real? Does that really reflect where Americans are?

MS. GOODWIN: I think it does reflect it. I think Americans have a basic sense of fairness. They even did some study of our DNA that says, as primates, we care about fairness, which is one reason why I think the country now is saying that Obama is speaking more to where the majority is by demanding both a combination of cuts and revenue increasement. But what you need then are people in the middle too often seen passive, they're defensive. You need passionate centrists. Somebody said to me, you need raging centrists. If somebody could come out and have the passion that Teddy Roosevelt had, he was absolutely in the center of the country. To the left of his Republican Party, to the right of the Republicans, he called for a square deal. Harry Truman called for a fair deal. That's what you need, people who are proud of being where that country is. The country's in the center, the country wants them, but too often the people with the passion are on the left and the right and the middle guys are trying to explain why we're in the middle.

Don't you love the way David Gregory frames the discussion? When will Villagers wake up and realize we don't live in the world of Teddy Roosevelt any longer? Democratic Blue Dogs got kicked out of office because of the Tea Party Conservatives in the midterms and moderate Republicans got kicked out of their party because of the same people. The GOP has radicalized so much so that Ann Coulter barely gets on Fox News anymore. We have Limbaugh and his clones along with Fox News on 24/7 everywhere in America, and as Jay Rosen wrote so brilliantly, what Murdoch and his posse all want is influence. And they got it, baby. So much so that the talkers on all the other networks all sound like they work for Fox now.

The punditocracy of this roundtable failed to address the truth of the matter. It's hard for them to not paint everybody as radicals in this time we live in except for themselves (very rich pundits and politicians) and the mythical centrists. Oh, and by the way, Andrea Mitchell: Obama's overt praise or support for Simpson-Bowles wouldn't have mattered one bit because raising taxes was never going to happen with Televangelists in da House.

Atrios:

You'll have to find it yourself, but little Tommy Friedman has penned another tribute to "the radical center," those group of people who are neither radical nor of the center and who are the most overrepresented people in Washington. Still what they need isn't simply power, but love, the undying and undeniable love of voters which escapes them every couple of years. Tommy knows that the plush offices of a hedge fund money backed reincarnation of Unity '08, called Americans Elect, will finally stir the voters to endorse, with grass roots input of course*, Everything Tommy Friedman Truly Believes. And, well, after that we might as well just stop with the whole voting thing. The people will have spoken, and the Plutocrat Party will begin their thousand year reign.

Friedman believes that voting on Internet polls will give us the true party of the people. No, really. And why does he hate Lady Gaga so much?

Digby reminds us of the Bloomberg-Wankstock of 2008

Oh Goody. These are people who evidently think the political center is between Barack Obama and the Republicans. Think about that for a moment.

Dave Weigel shares this bit of background on who Friedman and the Centrists see boldly challenging the status quo:

At the Aspen Ideas Festival, I'd heard him muse, to an audience of the sort of people who wouldn't laugh at "Americans Elect," that Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles should consumate their partnership as a presidential ticket.

Fortunately these wealthy gadflies come up with something like this in almost every election and it inevitably goes nowhere. Here's a little trip down memory lane:

January 07, 2008

By The Time They Got To Wankstock...read on

Here's most of the transcript. I did omit Rep. Kinzinger because I wasn't in the mood to read his words again after seeing him.

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Third Way released a brand new memo on how the Democratic Party’s only hope for the 2012 election is to cut the programs for the broad middle class that are their most popular legacy and the cornerstone of their brand: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It is an interesting strategy based on this reasoning:

• The deficit will be the key defining issue in 2012
• Voters want to do something about it
• Republicans are winning on the deficit issue
• Democrats can’t win an election anymore by defending Social Security and Medicare
• The public holds “nuanced” views on the issue of whether to cut Social Security and Medicare

Alongside these political arguments, naturally, they restate their long-held policy argument that cutting these benefits is the right thing — indeed the “progressive” thing — to do. And after making these points, they then do a tutorial for those Democrats who want to follow their lead as to how to talk about making these cuts, which leads with the exact same line the Republicans are using, which is that only by cutting these programs will we be able to preserve them for the long run. (Third Way’s talking points on how to sell these cuts to voters — i.e. we are making these cuts to “ensure that Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid will always be there for those who need it” — actually remind one how popular these programs actually are.) They then go into the Pete Peterson rhetoric about all the new retirees overwhelming the system, tell people to emphasize that these are “small adjustments, not major sacrifice,” and make it clear that “Washington must do its share.” They emphasize that this must be “bipartisan from start to finish.”

It is an interesting argument given how strong and overwhelming the polling is, and always has been, to not mess with Social Security and Medicare. For an organization that spends so much time focusing on polling data and making political arguments based on it, this can only mean one thing: they really, really want to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. I mean I knew they did already, given their January policy memo on doing just that; despite acknowledging that the future shortfall of Social Security could easily be fixed by lifting the payroll tax cap for wealthier people, Third Way preferred cutting benefits. But rather than speculating as to why they want to do this, even though the average senior citizen gets just $14,000 a year from Social Security, let's analyze the political arguments they are making on their own merits:

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Peter Ackerman's recipe for disrupting government

Never let it be said that Republicans make politics easy or understandable, despite their Frank Luntz talking points, and the mysterious Americans Elect group is a terrific example of how they muddy up elections, messages, and confuse voters.

Let's start with what David Atkins wrote last week over at Digby's place:

The GOP has figured out that it is much more intelligent in American politics to consolidate an unassailable ideological voter and donor base, win what elections they can essentially by default, and push the Overton Window as far as humanly possible toward conservatism while in office. And when Democrats hold office, as they inevitably will? Then prevent them from governing as Democrats:

At our 25th college reunion in 2003, Grover Norquist — the brain and able spokesman for the radical right — and I, along with other classmates who had been in public or political life, participated in a lively panel discussion about politics. During his presentation, Norquist explained why he believed that there would be a permanent Republican majority in America.

One person interrupted, as I recall, and said, “C’mon, Grover, surely one day a Democrat will win the White House.”

Norquist immediately replied: “We will make it so that a Democrat cannot govern as a Democrat.”

Far from being insane, this approach is actually eminently rational. The GOP needn't hold the presidency every cycle. All they need to do is prevent a Democratic President from accomplishing much of anything progressive while forcing him or her to clean up Republican messes. Then when they inevitably get back in office, they can continue to ratchet public policy as far to the right as possible until they inevitably lose again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Aligning with this strategy, they pull their most insane ideologues out of the mothballs to take a run at the presidential nomination, engaging their wingnut base and getting voters mobilized for the general election where a centrist will be nominated (Bush, McCain, Dole, and so on) and the rest will jockey for the VP slot.

This is how Republicans do it, and with a complicit media, they get away with it. The constant false equivalence, the appeal to the mysterious "independent" voter in the news, the polls that report how disgusted everyone is with partisan politics. All of it, points directly back to the core strategy of never allowing a Democrat to govern as a Democrat.

Enter "Americans Elect," the "populist internet" alternative to the two party system. Here's what AE's creators know: By being vague and inviting "clicktocracy" they can fool the ones who aren't already fiercely partisan, that "center of the spectrum" group that blows with the wind. And boy, have they fooled some people.

Who is Americans Elect?"

According to their pretty website, it's just voters like you and me who are tired of the party machines and want to use this fabulously democratic Internet thing to nominate a candidate for President.

What they really want to do is use hedge fund money, Republican shills, and a touchy-feely sort-of-social website to run a third party candidate. Think about this: So far, it's got moderate Republicans and pissed-off lefties on it. You think they'll make a willing coalition?

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