improving the city's tax competiveness sounds nice but lowering the business tax is not progressive nor is it sound fiscal policy and it does not improve the city's tax competiveness. So that may be a nice way to frame the issue but you would have to define "improving the city's tax competiveness" if you don't want me to assume what it means. Everything stated about Nutter is fact. No name calling is taking place. If DLCer's were progressive they would caucus with progressives in congress.

but that's irrelevant to the discussion. We can go over what makes one progressive or not but it gets us nowhere. That's agreed. Not all progressives agree on every list of issues 100%. That's agreed. But your moving the goal posts. If Nutter was in congress he would caucus not with progressives but with other DLCer's. Plain and simple fact. You should take this up with him not with me. I'm sure others would like to know where he stands. But the two postions that Nutter seems to be making the center piece of his campiagn are anything but progressive. They are old ideas. Progressives are for new ideas. Lowering taxes on those that can pay them or beefing up police to give people a false sense of security doesn't work not to mention the ideas not being progressive. You want to shake up the tax system in Philadelphia. At the same time push a green policy for the city how about trying a new idea like that proposed by Al Gore. It can be made revenue neutral and could have a major effect on not only the progressive movemnet but would shake the entire foundation of the Republican tax cut movement. Gore calls for elimination of payroll taxes, CO2 freeze. I'm sure a policy wonk can figure the numbers out and how they can be done on the local level. The city wage tax has continually been reduced and no new jobs now we want to lower the business tax and see if that will work. I'm for new ideas not debunked supply side theories that cause unbalanced budgets.

Ok, before we start pretending that you are just about the issues, let's make clear that you said that you couldn't support Saidel because he was rude to you. Rudeness/politeness are not progressive political issues. Case in point, I am "progressive", ok, I lie. I am not a progressive, I am a radical, but I am on the left side of the ledger. As a left-wing "progressive" I can name the issues and give a well reasoned arguement as to why you should agree with me if you are a "progressive," but I am a totally rude dick. You can be progressive and a total bastard, and, as the situation proves, pretty damn proud of it. Anyway, if you think that there aren't a broad set of values and issues that progressives can line up behind, as if it were too hard to define, your wrong. Progressives may disagree on the importance/priority of these issues, but that doesn't mean that they don't exist (which you seem to imply).

My previous comment (last week) hoped to frame for other left-wingers that a bedrock progressive issue is tax progressivity (Cool! "Progressive" is even in the word!). I don't think that progressives have much wiggle room on this issue, tax the rich, have solidarity with the poor and marginalized (women, workers, LGBTQ, people of color, aged...). Liberals (a dirty word among use socialists) often think that we have to let some tax cuts slide through to the rich and their mega-corporate institutions via things like cutting the gross reciepts tax. The idea is that a few dollars will inevitably fall out of the overstuffed pockets of our city's well-to-do. Progressives should have one responce to this class-war from above: "Bullocks!"

Progressivism is not about being socially liberal and fiscally conservative. That is a recipe for a politician that talks the talk and has no money to back up his/her platitudes. Empty promises are the signature of the Clintonian New Democrats. Basta!

Only progressive tax structures can result in nurturing progressive social policy. Nuff said.

Was at a funeral. I overheard a Republican bitching about how much Bush sucked and that he was voting against Republicans. Someone that knew I was into politics introduced us and said I was a Democrat. He claimed that he was voting democratic and was fed up with republicans but hoped I wasn't a liberal. I told him I was a progressive Democrat. He asked what that was. Gave him an explanation along the lines of what he was bitching about. He said "That's what I am too. I'm a progressive Democrat." Just like that. Are my views any different then a liberals? No. But it's all in the frame.

is mutual.

Who self-identify as "progressives," as distinct from a "liberal" or a "Democrat" My impression is that mostly it's White, middle class to upper class folks on the left (a group I belong to, btw). That is not the liberal Democratic base - most decidedly not. And I think that not appreciating that fact is dangerous.

1) Increased funding for public education and youth development services that includes truancy control, dropout prevention, mentoring, college prep, and local college scholarships.

2) Small Business Development that includes increased capital and credit access as well as procurement opportunities for disadvantaged businesses.

3) A total revamping of the Job Training and Placement bureaucracy that also better utilizes Community College of Philadelphia.

4) A cohesive and coherent Job Creation strategy that rationalizes public investment and establishes standard public benefit criteria for all economic development initiatives.

Off the top of my head ...

WWGjr

Well, we are far behind Chicago in enviro policy, what do you say we get ahead of them here?

It seems, as some have stated, we are too caught up in labels: progressive v. liberal, radical v. leftist. Like most issues, however, our so called progressivism runs on a spectrum. I would propose that it is important for us as young socially conscious politicos to embrace our own ideas and make those ideas happen, because no matter we will be making progress.

Now I know what some of you are thinking: certain ideas floated on this board seem mutually exclusive, like cutting taxes and providing services. However I would argue that politics is not necessarily a zero-sum outcome and defining the dialog as either/or is counter-productive. Rather, we should define what is important to us and look for ways for all of those things to coexist peacefully. To use the tax-cut/services example, we could offer tax advantages only for those companies that further a progressive agenda, like providing child care services for their workers, even the ones making only minimum wage. Or builders with eco-friendly designs. This is a win-win situation: the city gets to attract more businesses by cutting taxes and businesses get to keep their revenue while at the same time providing services to employees that can be used for PR and also to attract more talent. All I am saying here is that Philadelphia has too many resources and the people on this board are too smart not to think outside of the box.

On a second issue, many people on this board seem to be trying to out-left one another, and use historical movements to make arguments. However, most of us fail to properly analyze our own history. Many of the movements that we have cited had operatives working at different extremes, even within the individual movements themselves. And it is because of these extremes that any progress was made at all. It is argued that Martin Luther King, Jr. would not have been nearly as successful without Malcolm X; likewise the feminist movement needed a few bra-burners. Even the Animal Rights movement needed a few crazies and eco-terrorists throwing paint even animal blood on celebrities to draw attention to their cause. If we want to skew the center to the left, we’re going to need some people on the far left to tip the balance and some people in the immediate left as the voices of reason. But at the end of the day, we are all pulling left!

Finally, and wrapping up, as far as the mayoral race tearing the progressive community apart, we haven’t even heard any concrete ideas for change from many of the candidates. I went to a Fattah event yesterday on equity in education, and other that some cute one-liners the only thing he really said is, ‘we need to come up with a better way to fund education.’ Well, duh!? This is not necessarily to take potshots at Fattah so much as to point out that in order for a candidate to call themselves progressive, they should have to come up with some specific examples of how they would accomplish their goals (make progress). It is not enough for Nutter to say cutting taxes will bring in businesses. We need to know which taxes he plans to slash, what affect that will have on the income of the city and its ability to provide services, and whether businesses will be required to offset these costs by providing services or some alternative source of revenue other than just more paychecks.

I don't plan to vote for a candidate just because he's for schools or businesses any more that I would vote for someone who likes puppies. Liking puppies is good but it doesn't make my street any safer or cleaner. Lets drop the cerebral ivory tower mumbo jumbo and demand some real hard answers.

Ray seems to me to be abolutely right in all respects, except perhaps one.

1. We need to organize beyond what any individual group has been able to accomplish so far. We need to form a broad, inclusive coalition. None of the existing progressive groups are close to that but many of us have come to know each other over the past year and a half. Together we would be much more powerful than we are separately.

2. We need a progressive reform movement. Good government issues are important--ethics reform, public financing of campaigns, party reform and so forth. But they are not ends in themselves as far as I am concerned. They are means to the end of creating a party and city much more committed to social justice and the common good than they are today.

How do we get there? Ideas are the easy part. I have my list of issues which I have been presenting on my blog a almost a year now. And they are pretty similar to those others have put forward here.

Organization is hard. Someone--preferably a bunch of someones from a lot of organizations--has to call a meeting at which we start talking about what is possible right now. I actually think a lot is possible but we have to see if there is a broad consensus about that. If we can find a consensus among leaders of existing organizations about what we can do right now maybe we can move to a next step and call a city wide progressive convention.

The only possible disagreement I might have with Ray--and lately he has said somethings that suggests that the disagreement is minimal--is with regard to the Mayor's race. It seems to me that we have a number of candidate who are progressive about some matters. But no one of them is perfect. I'm afraid that if we try to endorse a Mayoral candidate we will tear a new inclusive progressive organization apart.

But a council slate strikes me as difficult but doable.

"...but we could build a party-like organization to groom, endorse and work for candidates we like."

"This is obviously what PFC and NN and some others are trying to do, but the fact is that without a broad coalition ofsuport, they will never be successful."

Here's my reaction to the juxtaposition of those two comments, and I'd be curious to hear responses if anyone has any.

It seems to me that when the focus gets directed at candidates, that's where the disunity becomes hardened, and where it becomes difficult to form a broad coaltion. To start with, most obviously, by definition, when a specific candidate becomes the focus, there is is a liklihood that racial cleavages will develop. This is a very real and significant issue in Democratic politics in Philadelphia.

And further, as long as the focus is on supporting this candidate or that candidate, the door is opened to opportunists who are more motivated by ambition than by "progressive" principles.

Personally, I think the best place to begin forming a broad coaltion is to focus on forming a broad coalition. And I think it needs to be done explicity without a focus on specific candidates, and without the accompanying partisanship (and self-interest) that comes along with the involvement of politicians.

There are a lot of issues that are very suitable for coaltion building among the different sub-communities in Philadelphia: Philadelphians having the right to legislate their own zoning and gun laws, better funding for our schools, a more robust recycling program, etc. With such a coalition established, then all candidates will have to answer to that consituency on those issues in order to survive.

I think the coalition should be the goal. Necessarily, focusing on establishing a unified "progressive" front will create fractures. As people have strong orientations towards particular issues, such as business tax policies, they can move out from any such coaltion to support a particular candidate. But I believe that the coalition itself needs to be non-aligned with specific candidates if it is to be successful.