This article was a very disappointing read. Is it really necessary to avoid all new ideas to be a progressive?

One could start with congestion pricing. We all know that roads are not a pure public good--if enough people use them, they get congested. In several places in the US, you can find toll lanes that adjust prices depending on the number of cars using them. If I want to pay extra, I can avoid traffic by using the toll lane. In the process, I decrease traffic in the "free" lanes (i.e. the lanes we pay for with gas taxes), and I reduce the amount everyone else needs to pay in taxes to maintain the roads. Yet Lind has a problem with this because rich people are more likely to use the toll lanes. Why? Because it's market-based?

I am even more mystified by Lind's opposition to cap-and-trade, an opposition that seems to stem from the fact that it's more complex than command-and-control. Okay, Mr. Lind, here's the simple explanation. You and I each own power plants. The government wants to reduce the amount of some pollutant that our plants put out by, say, 10%. It's air pollution, so the source doesn't really matter, just the total reduction. Now suppose it's much cheaper for you to make pollution reductions than it is for me. Wouldn't it be better if I could pay you to make the full reduction? That makes you happy because you get my money, it makes me happier because I don't have to spend as much, and it produces the same reduction in air pollution. It's really not that complicated.

This whole thing was essentially a laundry list of complaints, some of which were valid (I'm all for adequate antitrust enforcement). I just don't get this knee-jerk opposition to any solution that is less than 50 years old.

It looks as though the problem is that Obama's choice of tools, his cabinet members, are not the ones for the job. It is like hiring mafia members to police the city.

Also Obama is caught between two stones. Domestic collapse and foreigh empire expeditions that are bleeding the country to the bone. Unfortunately it seems that only a total internal collapse will put an end to the ever expanding military empire.

The desire of the Corporations, especially the oil corporations to control the supply and price of commodities in the name of "American Interests," all subsidised by the tax-payer, is a bottomless hole into which the life work of generations if being poured.

Using NATO as an auxiliary arm of the military and pressuring other countries to sacrifice their children and money in these expeditionary ventures is pure folly. Let the Oil companies pay for their own pipelines. They want to rip off the consummers to pay for their raw product then rip again to sell them what they have aleady paid for.

There is a name for this sort of thing - swindle - now called social work for the few. It seems to be working for the banks.

...brilliant progressive economists endorsed John Edwards not Barack Obama. They knew. I like Obama. He's a cool dude. But he is basically pretty conservative.

She lost the popular vote, unless you think 100% of the Democrats in Michigan and Florida would have picked her (they wouldn't - Hillary was likely ecstatic when they first learned that Christ basically cancelled the primary here since it meant she wouldn't have to talk around all those pictures of Elian with a gun to his head), and you've decided to give the citizens of Puerto Rico the right to vote in our Presidential elections.

How easy it is for some Democrats to overlook the fact that most of our economic troubles are the result of Bush failing to reverse Clinton and George I policies, and assume that more of the idiocy that created this mess would get us out of it.

Obama is what passes for a liberal these days. He's actually a Rockefeller Republican. It's been as plain as day for two years now; look at the Wall Street contributions to his campaign.

Sorry, lefties, but Eisenhower Republicans have taken over the Democratic Party and marginalized the ideas that made the party what it was in the 20th century. Nader was right about a few things, you know.

The fact that liberals continue to be surprised by this is becoming risible.

At least not so far. As of right now he's a National Socialist. Take money from the workers, give it to the corporations so they can create jobs and redistribute wealth. People bitched about Bush cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations, but Obamabots don't seem to mind when Barry simply writes them checks.

For another thing, when Eisenhower and Roosevelt were in charge it was against the law for any corporate entity to contribute to a political campaign. In 1973 the Supreme Court legalized bribery by proclaiming that money was free speech. So of course he's giving all this money to the private sector - do you really think all those PACs and CEOs contributed to his campaign so he could give the money to someone else?

...and yes, that's what that crap about Hillary winning the popular vote is, a LIE. Obama won more votes, more delegates, and more states. Deal with it. Your fiction requires a level of reaching and contortions that would shatter the spine of Gumby.

Joshua mentions that someone can't get over Hillary losing. First of all, she didn't lose; not with the "voters," at any rate. She beat Obama with the popular vote, in the nomination race. Before you start yelling about how it's not the popular vote that counts, let me remind you, that it was the Messiah himself, that indignantly and angrily protested, near the beginning of the nomination contest, that it was an obscene outrage how a bunch of "insiders," (i.e. delegates), were able to deny the voters access to their politician of choice. That was before he discovered that media and the rest of those creeps we call the establishment, decided on him, to beat Hillary. Before that, Obama had little plaques that said CHANGE, etc., which he would put on tables in front of him, when he responded to interviews, etc., and which did nothing to bolster his campaign, which for nearly a year, was stuck in neutral, 25 points behind Hillary. Timid Liberal? You ain't seen nothin' yet.

By the way, I never "got over" Bush "winning" over Gore.