Originally Posted by marypoza

-- no but the legislation Bill signed preventing excons from voting is supressing votes

I'm not sure there is such legislation. These things are decided by state.

I asked google and this came up:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/electio...ng-rights.aspx

Did you mean when Bill was governor of Arkansas?

I'm not sure any of that is relevant. It is the Republicans now who are suppressing voters, by requiring IDs, shortening voting hours and so on. It's the Republican Supreme Court that invalidated parts of the voting rights act. It's the Republicans and their Supreme Court who oppose campaign finance reform, on the grounds that money is speech.

A touch of reality -

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/12/su...ed-act-crashed

Bernie Sanders Voted For The Act That Helped Crash The Economy

Now we know why Bernie Sanders is so anxious to change the subject to Glass-Steagall when the Wall Street Crash of 2008 comes up. It turn out Mr. Independent Progressive (or is it Progressive Independent?) voted for the 2000 legislation that deregulated derivatives, credit default swaps and other exotic financial instruments that tanked the economy eight years later.

Let’s assume that Sanders never read the background report on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000. (Yeah, like Hillary Clinton never read the background report on the resolution in support of Dubya’s invasion of Iraq, something that Sanders has repeatedly pounded her on.)

But there it is in black and white, or rather red and blue: Sanders’ vote in the House on the very legislation that greased the skids for banks and other financial institutions to run roughshod without any messy government oversight.

The act was stealthily tucked into a bloated 11,000 page conference report when no one was looking, and passed by a lopsided 377-4 margin during a lame-duck session with a veto-proof majority -- not that it needed one. President Clinton, who had been lobbying behind the scenes in support of the act while publicly harrumphing about the evils of deregulation, signed it into law without batting an eye.

Buried in the act was a yummy provision exempting Enron and other companies from energy trading regulatory oversight.

Not coincidentally, in the years before the energy giant self destructed, it was a generous contributor to Texas Senator Phil Gramm, he of Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and later presidential candidate John McCain’s “financial adviser.” Gramm's wife Wendy was paid over $1 million in salary, stock options, dividends and other goodies from 1993 to 2001 as an Enron board member, but of course was deaf, dumb and blind to the energy company's rampant books cooking with the acquiescence of the late unlamented Arthur Andersen accounting company.

Sanders’ complicity in the passage of the Commodities Futures Modernization Act may help explain his fixation on restoration of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act, which barred commercial banks from investing in the very speculative financial deals which contributed significantly to the 2008 meltdown. (President Clinton also supported the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which overturned Glass-Steagall.)

Complicite then, but that's okay now, because Bernie is really really really mad at the banks. I'm mean really!

And it's going to make a really really really big difference in everyone's life - almost like Jesus!

Wheeeeeeee!!!!!!

Originally Posted by Odin

Feeling the Yern: Why One Millennial Woman Would Rather Go to Hell Than Vote for Hillary



But according to the Almighty barnshitting owl Playdude she is a moron wanting puppies and unicorns.

To paraphrase your linked article -

I believe Bernie is our savior because all my friends believe he is our savior, and if you don't like that, you are just a big meanie!

Originally Posted by B Butler

I'd say the same thing to the above scenario as I've been saying to our resident Marxist. As hard as it is to elect a transforming government looking after the interests of the general population, transformation by ballot box will happen before transformation by bomb. The Democrats seem to be working hard to set up a transformation by bomb. They make promises they can't keep. They speak of hope and change then bring in Wall Street insiders to run the economy. The bombs will come when it becomes clear that the ballot box can never get one anywhere. Still, the Republicans are working for the bomb even harder. Their rank and file has heard enough broken promises that their establishment candidates and platform is getting rejected by their own base. Well, you can see the same thing on the blue side. The insurgents are the front runners at the moment.

The scenario is terribly contrived, intended to stretch possibilities to fit another condition.

America is terribly polarized. There are no pragmatic liberals, and the conservatives have largely gone mad. That's the problem.

It's hard for me to see any virtues on the Right. It promotes economic growth and traditional values, supposedly... but economic growth from which only the rich can derive any net benefit, and traditional values that harsh necessity will gut. Hunger is the biggest threat to virtue that I can think of, so the pandering of the Right to "traditional values" is vain.





I'm trying to figure out whether I'm more upset by the Red rank and file or the Blue politicians. If there is to be a rebellion, who do we need to rebel against?[/QUOTE]

Bernie boys and girls need to take care to consider what they are being promised. Free education for all, for example.

I went to college for free in CA. I also could rent a room here for under $50 a month. And I did. The big food price and gas price inflation were only beginning. Now to rent an apartment here costs $3000 a month and a house costs at least a million dollars.

We have the Affordable Care Act, which still needs to be made more affordable. Bernie wants single payer, and he also wants free education for all, and says the rich will pay for it. That way he gets 85% of the youth vote.

But I suspect we are also going to need a compromise Affordable Education Act, and an Affordable Housing Act then too. Because there's not an unlimited supply of rich people forever to pay the sky high housing prices that teachers have to pay to live where I used to get college for free.

Now, what happens to the bern, when Bernie has to compromise in order to get any of these things? Will you turn on him like you turned on Obama, and not vote in the midterm election of 2018, thus killing off any hope for anything for another 8 or 16 years?

Bernie says the bern will rally the people to vote and then make congress act. He will probably still have a Republican congress, unlike Obama in 2009; but it's also true that Obama turned over health care to the congress and didn't rally the people to push harder for a more affordable affordable care act, with a public option and so on.

So, Bernie will bern and push for what he wants. But the chances are he will eventually compromise to get something rather than nothing, if he can get anything at all. Then will the "bernie-bots" here call him a neo-liberal, and say Republicans are better than he is? Remember Bernie wants single payer? But he said quite forcefully that he helped write the Affordable Care Act. He compromised to get his veterans health bill passed too. Yes, he will compromise to get things done. What will you guys do THEN? Will you call him untrustworthy? Will you say that you might as well have voted for Hillary? Yes, you probably will.

I'm all for feeling the bern. He'll have my vote, if I have a vote. Let's also make sure not to get berned by our own ignorance, and bern our own house down.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Bernie boys and girls need to take care to consider what they are being promised. Free education for all, for example.

I went to college for free in CA. I also could rent a room here for under $50 a month. And I did. The big food price and gas price inflation were only beginning. Now to rent an apartment here costs $3000 a month and a house costs at least a million dollars.

We have the Affordable Care Act, which still needs to be made more affordable. Bernie wants single payer, and he also wants free education for all, and says the rich will pay for it. That way he gets 85% of the youth vote.

But I suspect we are also going to need a compromise Affordable Education Act, and an Affordable Housing Act then too. Because there's not an unlimited supply of rich people forever to pay the sky high housing prices that teachers have to pay to live where I used to get college for free.

Now, what happens to the bern, when Bernie has to compromise in order to get any of these things? Will you turn on him like you turned on Obama, and not vote in the midterm election of 2018, thus killing off any hope for anything for another 8 or 16 years?

Bernie says the bern will rally the people to vote and then make congress act. He will probably still have a Republican congress, unlike Obama in 2009; but it's also true that Obama turned over health care to the congress and didn't rally the people to push harder for a more affordable affordable care act, with a public option and so on.

So, Bernie will bern and push for what he wants. But the chances are he will eventually compromise to get something rather than nothing, if he can get anything at all. Then will the "bernie-bots" here call him a neo-liberal, and say Republicans are better than he is? Remember Bernie wants single payer? But he said quite forcefully that he helped write the Affordable Care Act. He compromised to get his veterans health bill passed too. Yes, he will compromise to get things done. What will you guys do THEN? Will you call him untrustworthy? Will you say that you might as well have voted for Hillary? Yes, you probably will.

I'm all for feeling the bern. He'll have my vote, if I have a vote. Let's also make sure not to get berned by our own ignorance, and bern our own house down.

They will say they were fooled and it's all Bernie's fault.

They'll step back and watch him get eviscerated by the Right; justifying their lack of care because it's just those guys eating their own.

History may not repeat itself but it sure can rhyme.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtHshBWFRyg

Originally Posted by playwrite

... Full stop. The guy is riding a magic pony.

Which doesn't make him wrong, necessarily. Yes, we are choosing between paradigms, and it's about time. Will we succeed? That's one of those pesky known unknowns. It's true that the 1850s only happened once, but they did happen. We can act all civilized right up to the first mass action, or we can try to bend the line of history in a better direction. Like I noted about, what is gained by electing a Wall Street tool, when they are the problem?

So I'll take my chances, and only I'll vote for the tool if it's her or someone from the Trump/Cruz cabal. I probably won't if its another tool like Kasich, even knowing that he's a bigger tool than she is. I'm done with this.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Have you tried the new non-metallic tin foil? No buzzing!

Yeah, but no secret messages either.

Originally Posted by playwrite

How is Bernie going to come anywhere near threatening any gerrymandered district Representative or rural state Senator let alone the Freedom Caucus.

So many of you are confusing this civil war against an implacable foe that hates your very existence for some sort of faux revolution against some amorphous soft middle that doesn't have what you consider a perfect voting record.

To create fear, you need to change a given into a question mark. Bernie is making real head roads with lower income whites, which is a core constituency of the neo-liberal GOP. It doesn't take much more than a few high-profile losses in safe districts to get the message out there. Think Eric Cantor torpedoed from the left.

Of course, it may not work, but its not working now either. It's like sending the pitcher in to bat 4th. Most of the time, it's stupid, but occasionally, its Babe Ruth.

Originally Posted by playwrite

As I noted before, a whole new way to triangulate - ...

The old way looked remarkably like capitulation. I assume you have something better in mind ... but why expect new results from the same inputs?

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

It's like sending the pitcher in to bat 4th. Most of the time, it's stupid, but occasionally, its Babe Ruth.

Does this imply we ought to move Bernie to the outfield?

Originally Posted by playwrite

You're right, it would be much better if Clinton would only just join in and answer "Yes" to that berning question -

"Do you want to build a snowman?"

The woman is tone deaf, and always has been. I cringe at some of the stupidity. She can't articulate a simple idea. Its always convoluted and, often, a bit condescending. Here best attempt as keeping it simple was her adoption of the idea that, "it takes a village ...". Even there she managed to create more blowback than positive energy.

And let's look at her judgment. She had a clear path to single-payer healthcare when Bill was in office, oversold it, made powerful enemies, and lost the battle. Her Whitewater dealings were not illegal, but she obfuscated and blustered, making everyone think they were. The same is true with her email server, as dumb an idea for a high-profile public servant as I can imagine.

She's smart but not open, wise or cagey. She needs to be at least one of the three..

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Bernie boys and girls need to take care to consider what they are being promised. Free education for all, for example.

I went to college for free in CA. I also could rent a room here for under $50 a month. And I did. The big food price and gas price inflation were only beginning. Now to rent an apartment here costs $3000 a month and a house costs at least a million dollars.

I have my idea. Encourage the University of California system to establish branches in Appalachia, where real estate and construction labor are both cheap. A college boom in Appalachia would absorb many of the former coal miners as construction workers, alleviating much of the economic distress in the area. It would also establish some excellent colleges that have been rare in the area.

California residents would get in-state tuition due to the investment... and very low rents by California standards. Of course the local attractions might be awful to non-existent... but nobody would have to pay $3000 monthly rent for an apartment. One good thing about studying in a God-awful place is that there are no distractions.

But think of the boon to Appalachia: there would be well-educated youth as models of hope and the prospect of success.

We have the Affordable Care Act, which still needs to be made more affordable. Bernie wants single payer, and he also wants free education for all, and says the rich will pay for it. That way he gets 85% of the youth vote.

High-quality education pays for itself in federal income tax payments alone. Single payer? Even Medicare at 50 would have some positive effects. One is that it would stop age discrimination. Be 50 and generally competent and you might be desirable again. People in their 50s and early 60s can still be active... so long as they have not messed themselves up with bad habits (smoking, boozing, obesity).

But I suspect we are also going to need a compromise Affordable Education Act, and an Affordable Housing Act then too. Because there's not an unlimited supply of rich people forever to pay the sky high housing prices that teachers have to pay to live where I used to get college for free.

The housing bubble will implode. Many California residents are going to ask whether they might be better off to go to a place in which they can live for less than they are paying in rent. Sure, that means having to put up with fire-and-ice climates like this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waterloo,_Iowa#Climate

...The sort of place where it is possible to get frostbite and heatstroke in the same month.

Coastal California weather is for wimps. But Iowa has virtues -- good schools and a low crime rate.

Now, what happens to the bern, when Bernie has to compromise in order to get any of these things? Will you turn on him like you turned on Obama, and not vote in the midterm election of 2018, thus killing off any hope for anything for another 8 or 16 years?

Count on the Koch syndicate turning on him and offering its model of Hard Right pure plutocracy. Of course that has been done.

Bernie says the bern will rally the people to vote and then make congress act. He will probably still have a Republican congress, unlike Obama in 2009; but it's also true that Obama turned over health care to the congress and didn't rally the people to push harder for a more affordable affordable care act, with a public option and so on.

If Democrats don't win the House, then expect the same situation as from 2011 to now... and say hello to some right-wing Republican President who promises to get a lot done. Almost all of it will be wrong except for the economic elites of America; but elect Ted Cruz as President and we could see America turned back to having much the same institutions that it had when Herbert Hoover was President. Say farewell to Social Security, Medicare, and even the right to have a union. You might be working 12-hour workdays for near-starvation pay... and having to buy your necessities at the company store. You will want your children to get into the tourist business so that they might attract some rich foreign tourist and seduce him or her.

So, Bernie will bern and push for what he wants. But the chances are he will eventually compromise to get something rather than nothing, if he can get anything at all. Then will the "bernie-bots" here call him a neo-liberal, and say Republicans are better than he is? Remember Bernie wants single payer? But he said quite forcefully that he helped write the Affordable Care Act. He compromised to get his veterans health bill passed too. Yes, he will compromise to get things done. What will you guys do THEN? Will you call him untrustworthy? Will you say that you might as well have voted for Hillary? Yes, you probably will.

Republicans will simply say no. They will filibuster everything, just as the Koch brothers tell them to do. We will have the same gridlock. Of course I can think of far worse than gridlock -- lockstep in a very bad direction

I'm all for feeling the bern. He'll have my vote, if I have a vote. Let's also make sure not to get berned by our own ignorance, and bern our own house down.

Sage wisdom from the Boy Scouts -- Be prepared!

Originally Posted by playwrite

A touch of reality -

http://crooksandliars.com/2015/12/su...ed-act-crashed

Complicite then, but that's okay now, because Bernie is really really really mad at the banks. I'm mean really!

And it's going to make a really really really big difference in everyone's life - almost like Jesus!

Wheeeeeeee!!!!!!

OK, that was bad, though less bad than the Clinton involvement.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

I'm not sure there is such legislation. These things are decided by state.

I asked google and this came up:
http://www.ncsl.org/research/electio...ng-rights.aspx

Did you mean when Bill was governor of Arkansas?

I'm not sure any of that is relevant. It is the Republicans now who are suppressing voters, by requiring IDs, shortening voting hours and so on. It's the Republican Supreme Court that invalidated parts of the voting rights act. It's the Republicans and their Supreme Court who oppose campaign finance reform, on the grounds that money is speech.

The maddening thing about the New Jim Crow is that we cannot point to any one piece of legislation that caused this. It's how some new legislation interacts with some older policies and even technological advances in areas from information technology to surveillance to forensics, and how all of these things are implemented in practice.
Prohibition of convicted felons from voting is not a new idea. It's a very old idea that goes back at least as long as the antebellum period in some states. In many cases, we are dealing with laws that were on the books for generations (though used during Jim Crow very effectively in concert with such things as vagrancy laws aimed at giving every male African-American criminal status so that they could legally be re-enslaved). It's how these laws interact with sentencing laws and policies that give all power to prosecutors who insist on everyone accused being convicted of SOMETHING that has created the sheer volume of mass incarceration and mass disqualification that we see today.
Bill Clinton had nothing to do with felon disqualification laws. But he did (and Hillary supported) such things as "Three-strikes legislation" and mandatory minimum sentencing that gave prosecutors power to effectively determine a convict's sentence by deciding what the charge against the defendant would be. This, along with more restrictive bail gave prosecutors the leverage they needed to get convictions 90% of the time and to pressure people charged with crimes into implicating others, often spuriously. When over 90% of the time, cases do not go to trial because defendants plead guilty to SOMETHING (and those that do go to trial are generally defendants with money) prosecutors have too much leverage.
The welfare reform legislation that Bill Clinton signed (and Hillary enthusiastically helped to sell), amongst other things, made it impossible to harbour even an accused criminal under the family roof. Or receive ANY benefits. Which effectively has created a situation in which families with money can put a wayward child up in an apartment (or keep that person at home) and that person can comply with parole and probation restrictions and avoid returning to prison but poor families cannot safely help a child with a criminal conviction and that person has little choice but to commit new crimes--especially since that person can't legally join the armed services either or get any financial assistance to get any further education. And this did not apply only to violent crime but most especially to drug crimes, even in many states, simple possession which were non-violent.
It's all the difference between de jure discrimination and de facto discrimination which bedeviled the Civil Rights Movement in the 60s and which Civil Rights groups ultimately were not able to overcome.
I realise that the Clintons were only following the zeitgeist of the 80s and 90s, a time in which Boomers, as Idealists both were outraged by crime (Missionary Idealists supported the KKK in the 10s and 20s) and felt a need to prove to THEIR GI ELDERS that they were not traitors or irresponsible--in other words, to live down their actions in the 60s and 70s from opposing the Vietnam War to drug taking. (Anyone remember the extreme "tough on drugs" rhetoric and policy of the 90s?) In the process though, Boomers set much of the Millennial Generation on the "school-to-prison pipeline" while creating an economy that ruined prospects for much of the rest and now for Boomers it's a case of "instant karma", to paraphrase John Lennon and Yoko Ono. A lot of what is happening with Sanders (and to a lesser extent on the Right with Trump) is Millennials sitting in judgement on their elders. And it isn't pretty.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

The old way looked remarkably like capitulation. I assume you have something better in mind ... but why expect new results from the same inputs?

It wasn't just capitulation. There was a remarkable convergence and consensus around such things as hatred of crime and criminals and support for "free markets" between Democrats and Republicans during the 90s, just as there was during the 1910s and 1920s. And the Southern New Democrats like Carter and Clinton were the lineal and more genteel descendants of the Dixiecrats of old (though politically perhaps more like the "Bourbon Democrats" in the Grover Cleveland mould).

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Bernie boys and girls need to take care to consider what they are being promised. Free education for all, for example.

I went to college for free in CA. I also could rent a room here for under $50 a month. And I did. The big food price and gas price inflation were only beginning. Now to rent an apartment here costs $3000 a month and a house costs at least a million dollars.

We have the Affordable Care Act, which still needs to be made more affordable. Bernie wants single payer, and he also wants free education for all, and says the rich will pay for it. That way he gets 85% of the youth vote.

But I suspect we are also going to need a compromise Affordable Education Act, and an Affordable Housing Act then too. Because there's not an unlimited supply of rich people forever to pay the sky high housing prices that teachers have to pay to live where I used to get college for free.

Now, what happens to the bern, when Bernie has to compromise in order to get any of these things? Will you turn on him like you turned on Obama, and not vote in the midterm election of 2018, thus killing off any hope for anything for another 8 or 16 years?

Bernie says the bern will rally the people to vote and then make congress act. He will probably still have a Republican congress, unlike Obama in 2009; but it's also true that Obama turned over health care to the congress and didn't rally the people to push harder for a more affordable affordable care act, with a public option and so on.

So, Bernie will bern and push for what he wants. But the chances are he will eventually compromise to get something rather than nothing, if he can get anything at all. Then will the "bernie-bots" here call him a neo-liberal, and say Republicans are better than he is? Remember Bernie wants single payer? But he said quite forcefully that he helped write the Affordable Care Act. He compromised to get his veterans health bill passed too. Yes, he will compromise to get things done. What will you guys do THEN? Will you call him untrustworthy? Will you say that you might as well have voted for Hillary? Yes, you probably will.

I'm all for feeling the bern. He'll have my vote, if I have a vote. Let's also make sure not to get berned by our own ignorance, and bern our own house down.

That's why universities like UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton have been building "university villages" where faculty and staff can live. It seems to turn into a tradeoff in which tenured faculty get life tenancy to be able to be faculty rather than affording and buying their own homes. Of course tenure is getting rarer and rarer, something Bernie, one would presume, would remedy.

Playwrite, you and all the other Hillarians sound like robots spewing the same talking points after being programmed with the latest talking points.


Keep on doing it, because you are just pissing us Millennials off even more and thus helping Bernie.

Originally Posted by B Butler

Have you tried the new non-metallic tin foil? No buzzing!

OK.

Originally Posted by bob's headers

Raytheon, General Dynamics and many other large corporations recommend...

Nope, but herein lies the producer.
http://outdooryy.en.alibaba.com/comp...ml#top-nav-bar

Originally Posted by B Butler

I'd say the same thing to the above scenario as I've been saying to our resident Marxist. As hard as it is to elect a transforming government looking after the interests of the general population, transformation by ballot box will happen before transformation by bomb. The Democrats seem to be working hard to set up a transformation by bomb. They make promises they can't keep. They speak of hope and change then bring in Wall Street insiders to run the economy. The bombs will come when it becomes clear that the ballot box can never get one anywhere. Still, the Republicans are working for the bomb even harder. Their rank and file has heard enough broken promises that their establishment candidates and platform is getting rejected by their own base. Well, you can see the same thing on the blue side. The insurgents are the front runners at the moment.

I'm trying to figure out whether I'm more upset by the Red rank and file or the Blue politicians. If there is to be a rebellion, who do we need to rebel against?

Easy question, we need rebel against our own politicians like the Red rank and file have been doing. The Democrats were given one choice, ONE CHOICE. Do you have any idea how bad that looks to the rest of us? You talk about rigged, how rigged does that appear to the rest of us and portions of their own? Bernie volunteered to be an alternative choice. The Republicans at least offered us a lot more choices as far as their candidates and alternatives to their choices as candidates.

Most Americans can't stand the very idea of Hillary occupying the oval office. Personally the very thought of that hag running the country and holding the nuclear football should scare any sane person.

Originally Posted by Odin

Playwrite, you and all the other Hillarians sound like robots spewing the same talking points after being programmed with the latest talking points.


Keep on doing it, because you are just pissing us Millennials off even more and thus helping Bernie.

If Bernie doesn't win, will you vote for Hillary instead?

Originally Posted by MordecaiK

That's why universities like UC Irvine and Cal State Fullerton have been building "university villages" where faculty and staff can live. It seems to turn into a tradeoff in which tenured faculty get life tenancy to be able to be faculty rather than affording and buying their own homes. Of course tenure is getting rarer and rarer, something Bernie, one would presume, would remedy.

Obviously the high cost of college today is not sustainable. I hope that would be one remedy; it might help. The other is something like Rubio suggests; places like Udacity where you just take courses on-line. That to me is not education, but if education is priced beyond peoples' reach, or beyond the ability of taxes on the rich to cover, we may be forced to settle for it.

Eric The Green is a functional conservative. Like the self-admitted conservatives he peddles superstition in place of reason; like the conservatives, he prefers the maintenance of the status quo to its overturn.

Bernie Sanders is a Silent, or at least an honorary one. If Sanders were a core Boomer, EtG would be all over his jock. But as is typical of the Me Generation, anyone outside of it can be given no shrift.

Fuck that, fuck him and fuck Hillary.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

Obviously the high cost of college today is not sustainable. I hope that would be one remedy; it might help. The other is something like Rubio suggests; places like Udacity where you just take courses on-line. That to me is not education, but if education is priced beyond peoples' reach, or beyond the ability of taxes on the rich to cover, we may be forced to settle for it.

As I am reminded from the first college-level course in economics that I took, there is no such thing as a vertical demand curve. Anything can be overpriced, and nothing is valuable solely for its cost. As has been shown to be true for real estate, so will be shown for education, especially the traditional model of college.

I can almost make some predictions about college -- that recorded lectures will become commonplace, that great colleges will start making alliances with out-of-the-way places, that college might become structured much like an internet café or even a sports bar. There is no reason for recorded lectures, like those of Richard Feynmann (who taught freshman physics once with the cameras rolling so that he would never have to teach freshman physics again) not being reused except for obsolescence... Feynmann is no longer available except through recorded lectures.

Although the more interactive classes will require a formal, structured classroom (as for foreign languages and basic composition), the typical lecture might be shown in something resembling a sports bar.

In view of all the dead retail space... can you think of a nobler use?

If the Metropolitan Opera can feed live performances to movie theaters (a fitting alliance because opera and cinema goers are not the same people; the Met gets to play in places with no opera company and people who rarely see movies buy tickets for something at the theater and might have some popcorn while enjoying Trovatore ... opera fans are high-end clientele in contrast to people who attend the movie theater for exploitative rubbish on a date)... then why can't Harvard or the University of California feed lectures to academically under-served places like Muskegon, Michigan? Or to second-tier colleges and universities?

The idea that people must overpay for college makes about as much sense as that people must overpay for food. If extant institutions can't control costs, then others will find ways.