This is not a candidate diary, it's something more important that that.

Regardless of who is elected in 2008, the continuing evasion of personal responsibility by wealthy Americans will mean that working Americans are forced to pick up the bill.  It's dine and and dash for the ruling class. To the money shot.

"Liechtenstein's LGT Bank, which is owned by the Royal family, has apparently harbored numerous secret accounts which hid the taxable assets of thousands of citizens from around the world. It is my understanding that many U.S. citizens have also hidden assets at this bank, which is a real injustice to the millions of working families in this country who honestly pay their taxes every year.....

Offshore tax evasion produces an estimated $100 billion in unpaid taxes each year.

The time has come.  

Our political system is dominated by big money, and categorizing its influence as the work of "special interests" is misleading.  At its heart the corrosive influence of money on the political process is something far more sinister, it's perhaps the most subtle form of domination of our domestic political order to have ever existed.  As much as pundits lament the excesses of the old days of the Democratic "machines" at least then, candidates were required to earn the support of party activists. In the post war period, this allowed working people the greatest influence that they have ever had on the political process in this country, and paid divdends for the working class.

Those days are gone, but the time has come for change to reduce the influence of money in the system.  The time has come for the Democratic party to impose spending limits for our primary season.

Union endorsements matter, and nowhere is this more true than in Nevada where the 2004 caucuses saw only 9,000 voters participate, a new record.  In 2008, the role of the Culinary Worker's Local 226 more than 60,000 members will become even more important as a changes in the caucus sructure make it much easier for Strip workers to participate.  

In 2004, the party had only 17 caucus sites, one per county.... Notably, the party will hold eight to 10 at-large precinct meetings for as many as 4,000 shift workers on the Strip who otherwise could not take off time from work to participate in the caucus. Those meetings, which underscore the importance of Culinary Union members in the Democratic caucus effort, could take place in hotel ballrooms, officials said.

Crossposted from Blue Indiana

Anyone who's bee watching the new lately knows that there's something of a property tax revolt going on in Indiana.  Hundreds of thousands of Hoosiers have seen their property tax bills skyrocket, and if you follow the media narrative, you'd think that there's been a massive growth in government spending that's at fault here.  The truth though is that there hasn't been a tax increase in Indiana, but there has been a massive

tax shift.

Yesterday, Jerome Armstrong posted a front page entry talking about the electability question, and dredging up the old discussion of whether John Edwards is the most electable candidate and why.  Dodging between the race baiting and attacks that he's anti-Obama in his posts, Jerome was able to post an update from the analysis of the poll that the diary focused on, noting the reason that Edwards is more electable than other candidates.

Unlike other Democrats, who will be forced to "run the table" of states where Democrats have been competitive in recent elections, Edwards brings new states into play. This provides alternative scenarios - and a margin for error - when it comes to winning 270 electoral votes.

Now there seemed to be a group posting in Jerome's entry yesterday that took this to be tacit evidence of racism.  But I don't think that's what it is.  

This isn't about the messenger, it's about the message.  

In the Southern Iraqi city of Basra, a standoff is developing between striking Iraqi oil workers and the Iraqi military. Iraq PM Nouri Al-Maliki has issued arrest warrants for leaders of the Iraq Federation of Oil Unions (IFOU) currently on strike in Southern Iraq to stop the Oil Law that would privatize much of Iraq's oil industry, opening the door to foreign ownership.  Prior to issuing warrants for the union leaders arrest, the Iraqi military surrounding the striking workers as they stopped the flow of oil to Baghdad.  At this time oil exports have not been affected.  

According to a statement released by numerous international solidarity groups working with the oil workers in and around Basra, in southern Iraq, the workers were charged with "sabotaging the economy" and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Tuesday he'd meet "with an iron fist" those who threaten Iraq's oil production.

While it may be easy to dismiss this as something happening in a far off country with little relevance to American life or politics, a long running debate in the Iraqi parliament over a new Oil law that would privatize the Iraq's oil industry is alledged to be behind the Bush adminstration's refusal to adopt a timeline for the withdrawl of American forces from Iraq.  US Labor Against the War is urging their supporters to write Congress to delink withdrawl from the privatization of Iraq's oil.  

Wow.

Something's up with Hillary Clinton.  I was watching CNN today, and she came on with her latest speech.  I was shocked, because Clinton has unabashedly adopted rhetoric at odds with the Rubinite legacy of her husband's adminstration. Two phrases in her latest speech stick out as being word for word associated with the Economic Policy Institute, a labor backed think tank at odds with the more incremental policies being pushed by the Rubin backed Hamilton Project at Brookings.

"Shared Prosperity" and "We're in it together" economy.

Thomas over at Blue Indiana has a post up now about a South Bend Tribune article that asks whether a Democratic presidential contender could win Indiana.  Indiana has undergone a tremendous political shift in the last year, the Republican party is increasingly under fire in the state for its support of economic policies that harm working people.  Interestingly, there's a group of prominent Democrats in the state that believe there's a candidate in the race who can make Indiana go blue.

A cadre of leading Indiana Democrats is beginning to believe that John Edwards has the potential to do what no Democratic presidential candidate has done since Lyndon Johnson in 1964: Win in Indiana.

The list of Edwards supporters includes D. William Moreau, an Indianapolis attorney who served as chief of staff for Evan Bayh when Bayh was governor of Indiana; Ann Delaney, a former Indiana Democratic Party chairwoman; Russ Stilwell, majority leader of the Indiana House; and Shaw Friedman, a LaPorte attorney who served as general chairman for U.S. Rep. Joe Donnelly's 2006 election campaign.

Moreau says polling data has confirmed his belief that of the "big three" Democratic presidential contenders -- U.S. Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., are the other two -- Edwards would run the strongest in Indiana and have the best chance of turning what has traditionally been a "red" state into a "blue" one.