Dust-Up In Orlando-- Alan Grayson vs John Mica vs Nick Ruiz

The Orlando Metro has 4 congressmen, Corrine Brown (D-FL-05), John Mica (R-FL-07), Alan Grayson (D-FL-09) and Daniel Webster (R-FL-10). These were the election results last November:

• Corrine Brown- 71%
• Alan Grayson- 63%
• Daniel Webster- 52%
• John Mica- 59%

Monday, Lauren Rowe, a feisty, albeit simpleminded, reporter from WKMG, Local 6, invited two of them, Orlando's dynamic duo, Grayson and Mica, on to Flashpoint to discuss the Sequester, which Mica voted for and which Grayson strenuously opposes. "Anybody," Grayson patiently explained to Rowe, "who's looked at this agrees it will cost at least 700,00 jobs nationally and maybe as high as 3 million. At a time when the economy is already weak, slowing recovering-- and could easily double dip into a double dip recession-- I think it's a mistake from any sort of view of economic management... And I'm against it; I voted against it. I've been pretty consistent about that. Remember, we're talking about federal employees. Every one of those jobs is a job in the United States. You give a tax cut to a multinational corporation and the money either ends up in Zurich, Switzerland or it ends up in Singapore or it ends up in Tokyo or Seoul. It hardly ever ends up here creating new jobs in the United States. When you cut federal spending, you're cutting U.S. jobs," he tried explaining to the bobble-head who was already on to the next question someone had written for her about "some seniors who are maybe missing their Meals on Wheels."

Grayson, who Democratic freshmen admiringly call "the Kraken," was like a patient professor trying to make Rowe understand. But she seemed neither capable nor interested. "OK, let's move on to immigration..." She seemed far more deferential to Mica. As you can hear on the video above, Mica regurgitated the stale Republican Party talking points of failed European Austerity. Not on the video, of course, is the actual Democrat who is running against Mica and will replace him as the fourth Orlando congressmember if the DCCC decides to spend money on a real Democrat instead of on a celebrity's sister who publicly bashes unions. We asked Nick Ruiz to take a look at the interview and tell us what Orlando voters would have heard from him instead of Mica. If you like it and would like to help him get into Congress, please consider a contribution on this page. Nick:

"The problems America has come to face are simply not being handled well by people like John Mica. People need higher wages. Mica votes against higher wages. Social Security does not pay enough for retirement purposes. Mica votes to cut Social Security. Government spending per se isn't out of control. The lack of appropriate levels of historic taxation are out of control. Pollution is out of control. Banks are out of control. Military escapades are out of control. People like John Mica are out of control, and left so, continue to unbalance and mismanage the federal affairs of the United States of America to the point where we lag behind nearly all other Western nations on multiple historic measures. That's a fact. John Mica, along with countless other Republicans, and even some horribly unreliable Democrats, have brought about mass American failure. That is their legacy. Be it on education, fair wages, healthcare, the military, energy policy, social justice issues and more. Repeatedly, people like John Mica default to senseless policies of social bigotry and economic hardship, that are breaking the back of our domestic social and economic systems, and have squandered our reputation amongst a world of nations. It's time for him to go. And I look forward to replacing him for you in 2014."

Can you imagine the look on Rowe's face when she has Nick on her show and he let's loose with something like that? Two krakens... better than one.

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Nick Ruiz And The Inaugural Issue Of New Left Now

In the premier issue of New Left Now, I interviewed progressive congressional candidate Nick Ruiz, who's running against a GOP Establishment hack in the Orlando area, John Mica. They said it would be OK for me to run the entire interview here at DWT. I want to remind you as you dig in, that Nick is a grassroots candidate with no personal wealthy, no corporate ties and no backing from the DC Establishment. If you want to help put someone into Congress who will kick ass for working families and never back down, please consider contributing to Nick's campaign.

New Left Now: This is the inaugural issue of New Left Now. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what it is and why you’ve started it?

Nick Ruiz: Well, the premise is simple enough. American politics and media have taken such a hard turn to the right, that the progressives in this country, in trying to work within the current political and cultural circumstances, are unrecognizable to themselves. They don’t understand their own legacy. They don’t know where they come from and even, what they truly think today, about the real problems of engaging progressivism. And most importantly, because of all that, they don’t know where they are going. They’ve lost their cultural memory, along with their social and historical bearings. I want to change that.

New Left Now: So how does New Left Now fit in that process?

Nick Ruiz:  New Left Now is a forum for progressives. It’s the magazine of the New American Left. Essentially, it will follow an interview format. It will ask progressives: What are you doing? Is it working? Why? Why not? What’s your vision and hope for progressivism in the U.S.? Progressives are failing this country, in the most horrible of ways. Look at the Social Security cuts coming our way-- are you kidding me? We’re in one of the worst chapters of American history in terms of the lives of millions of people working every day and getting nowhere, even sliding backward, on voting rights, economics, racism, education and more-- and our irresponsible and inexcusable answer as a community-- is to decide that we’re cutting social services, we’re closing schools; that we’ll allow rampant voter suppression efforts; that we’ll tolerate congressmen calling Hispanics ‘wetbacks’ as in the case of the Alaska rep. Is this America? Yeah, this must be the place. Progressives are supposed to combat these things. But we’re losing this war, and we need to talk about it, so we can turn it around.

New Left Now: What’s your answer to all of this?

Nick Ruiz: Lots of things. I reach students through the college teaching and work I do in philosophy and humanities, because those subjects are rich environments for considering sociocultural questions, and students have the most time to develop insight and proceed to progressively change the world they live in. I’m running for Congress. Third time, I do so. I’ve started a leadership PAC called the Florida Forum for Social Justice in 2011 that supports authentic progressive federal candidates. At the same time, I started a non-profit think tank/advocacy group called the Progressive Leadership Council that troubleshoots current progressive trends and advocates for what needs to change in progressive culture in the U.S. We need authentic progressive representation, and we need a cultural environment that understands the benefits and realities of progressivism, as well the challenges progressivism faces in an increasingly hyper-corporate American culture.

New Left Now: How will you help voters-- who are often busy with their day to day struggles-- understand the difference between a progressive and a garden variety corporate Democrat?

Nick Ruiz: That’s really the question, isn’t it? Plenty of ‘Democrats’ running around. They just don’t do democratic things. They don’t write democratic policy. Modern Democrats have lost their way. We have to rethink the entire enterprise. I see the word ‘progressive’ as synonymous with ‘democratic’, because to be truly democratic, you have to make policy and support agendas that are fair to the most amount of people. Decisions have to be socioeconomically just. That’s the progressive test. In addition to that, policy objectives should seek to improve people’s lot in life, where reasonably possible. That’s New Deal policy. Garden variety corporate Democrats don’t do these things. Often enough, they do the opposite. Take the President’s move to cut Social Security-- and the Democratic establishment complicity with it. Not democratic. Not progressive. In fact, it’s Republican, and anti-social justice. It’s this sort of difference that must be pointed out for people. People have to understand that these kinds of people cannot be politically supported, nor elected.

New Left Now: Many Democrats just finished supporting and voting for President Obama, and now that he has broken his most fundamental campaign promise to not reduce Social Security benefits for seniors-- how do you deal with that without turning off voters entirely and making them cynical, repeating the words Republicans love hearing most, “They’re all the same.”

Nick Ruiz:  We have to be honest about it. The people of this country don’t want this, not when they understand the parameters of it, and not even superficially on the face of it. And most Democrats don’t want to do it. So why do it? Because they are not listening to the people. They are listening to the wealth establishment, and they are cognizant of the funding of their political campaigns. They want to curry favor with the wealth establishment. That’s who wants this done. In that sense, corporate politicians, and the PACS that support them, are all the same. But we have choices to make. You can vote for me in FL-7-- I’m the anti-social justice establishment’s worst nightmare. Because I will not acquiesce to social injustice. In fact, I will work to reorder the entirely unjust scenario just described, by replacing corporate Democrats with authentic progressive people.

New Left Now: Many Democrats here in Florida are celebrating new recruits to the party like Charlie Crist and Patrick Murphy, lifelong Republicans who are now opportunistically calling themselves “Democrats.” How do you make grassroots Democrats understand how this hurts what the party stands for?

Nick Ruiz: There’s a certain level of intellectual and emotional maturity that has escaped too many Democrats today, I think. And they don’t know what being a Democrat, really means. It means you can’t legislate against the socioeconomically-just, greater interests of people. That’s something Republicans do, consistently. Not Lincoln, and those kinds of Republicans. They’re in the past. Today’s Republicans. The Bush regime. The Romney/Ryan riot. The Fox News channel that propagandizes all politics to the point of farce. Grassroots Democrats have to support the Democrats that actually matter to the greater good. Everything else is waste of time, energy and money.

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