It's not surprising that Third-Way Democrats are coming to hate being called Third-Way Democrats

[merrily]

50. The best I can do is ask you to read that entire thread.

One of the co-founders of the Democratic Socialism movement posted to tell me my Op was correct. Some socialists posted on the thread to share their views. (I don't know if they were responding to the request I had posted in the Social Progressive Group for input on my thread in the Bernie Group.)

That reads to me as saying that a Democratic Socialist is not a socialist, and in fact as disavowing socialism.

That may be so.

I think the country, Canada, should be the owner of Canada's natural resources, and rights to those resources should only be leased out under strict regulation, where the Canadian environment is protected and Canada gets a fair return.

That's what traditional Democrat and capitalist Harry Truman said about oil.

Take the problem of offshore oil, for example. The minerals that lie under the sea off the coasts of this country belong to the Federal Government--that is, to all the people of this country. The ownership has been affirmed and reaffirmed in the Supreme Court of the United States. Those rights may be worth as much as somewhere between $40 billion and $100 billion.

If we back down on our determination to hold these rights for all the people, we will act to rob them of this great national asset. That is just what the oil lobby wants. They want us to turn the vast treasure over to a handful of States, where the powerful private oil interests hope to exploit it to suit themselves.

Talk about corruption. Talk about stealing from the people. That would be robbery in broad daylight--on a colossal scale. It would make Teapot Dome look like small change.

I got a letter from a fellow in Texas today, who is a friend of mine, and he was weeping over what the schoolchildren of Texas were going to lose if Texas didn't get its oil lands 9 miles out from the shore. And I composed a letter to him, and then didn't send it. I said what about the schoolchildren in Missouri and Colorado, and North Dakota and Minnesota, and Tennessee and Kentucky and Illinois, do they have any interest in this at all? Evidently not, it should all go to Texas. Well, it isn't going there, if I can help it.

I can see how the Members of Congress from Texas and California and Louisiana might like to have all the offshore oil for their States. But I certainly can't understand how Members of Congress from the other 45 States can vote to give away the interest the people of their own States have in this tremendous asset. It's just over my head and beyond me how any interior Senator or Congressman could vote to give that asset away. I am still puzzled about it. As far as I am concerned, I intend to stand up and fight to protect the people's interests in this matter.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12775715


However, government's owning some things is not, in and of itself, socialism. Our government claims to own airwaves and other things.