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If you thought state budgets were in bad shape last year, just wait: 2010 promises to be brutal for lawmakers -- many facing re-election -- as they scramble to find enough money to keep their states running without raising taxes.

Tax collections continue to sputter. Federal stimulus dollars are about to dry up. Rainy day funds have been tapped. And demand for services -- like Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits -- is soaring.

New York Times

If you thought state budgets were in bad shape last year, just wait: 2010 promises to be brutal for lawmakers -- many facing re-election -- as they scramble to find enough money to keep their states running without raising taxes.

Tax collections continue to sputter. Federal stimulus dollars are about to dry up. Rainy day funds have been tapped. And demand for services -- like Medicaid, food stamps and unemployment benefits -- is soaring.

A permutation of radical left activism and reformism solves best

G. WILLIAM DOMHOFF is a distinguished research professor at the University of California-Santa Cruz, In These Times, January 2010, He is the author of four books that were among the top 50 bestsellers in sociology in the second half of the 20th century: Who Rules America? (1967), The Higher Circles (1970), The Powers That Be (1979), and Who Rules America Now? (1983). More recently, he is the author of Who Rules America: Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance, Sixth Edition (2010) and co-author of The Leftmost City: Power and Progressive Politics in Santa Cruz (2009). 

For liberals and leftists to successfully make change together, they must first reach an understanding, if not agreement, on four major areas:

* electoral strategy

* the crucial role of social movements

* the need for innovative economic models

* the definition of "us" vs. "them"

Here is a step-by-step approach for helping liberals and progressives find common ground. I am proposing a way for leftists to cooperate with liberals to generate short-term advances while at the same time competing with them for the allegiance of the majority to a strong egalitarian vision. In doing so I am claiming the fault is not in our values, but in our strategies. I am suggesting a "liberal egalitarianism." Yes, it's a long shot, but thinking big is worthwhile in moments of great crisis.

Dennis Ray Morgan, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Yongin Campus - South Korea Futures, Volume 41, Issue 10, December 2009, Pages 683-693, World on fire: two scenarios of the destruction of human civilization and possible extinction of the human race

In a remarkable website on nuclear war, Carol Moore asks the question “Is Nuclear War Inevitable??” In Section , Moore points out what most terrorists obviously already know about the nuclear tensions between powerful countries. No doubt, they’ve figured out that the best way to escalate these tensions into nuclear war is to set off a nuclear exchange. As Moore points out, all that militant terrorists would have to do is get their hands on one small nuclear bomb and explode it on either Moscow or Israel. Because of the Russian “dead hand” system, “where regional nuclear commanders would be given full powers should Moscow be destroyed,” it is likely that any attack would be blamed on the United States”

Israeli leaders and Zionist supporters have, likewise, stated for years that if Israel t

Social services stifle political unrest and ensures an ample supply of low wage workers for capitalists

 Sarah Steinheimer, Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice, 2008, “Welfare Reform and Sexual Regulation by Anna Marie Smith.,”  p. 226-7

As a political theorist, Smith dedicates three chapters of her book to an in-depth examination of social and political theory and concludes Chapter Three with an outline of her own theory of sexual regulation. Inspired by Michel Foucault, Smith draws most heavily on his theory of biopower -- modern population control by the State n1 (p. 38). Smith also emphasizes the work of welfare theorists Piven and Cloward, who argue the true function of the welfare State is not to provide for poor families, but to stifle political unrest and to ensure an ample supply of low-wage workers for capitalist interests n2 (p.15).