Originally Posted by summer in the fall

To make a long story short, mass consensus does not dictate what is covered in the media and high stakes political races are good for TV ratings and the profits of media in general. If I were you, I'd start reading something else.

so does this explain the rise of punditry and prediction making? there does seem to be a lack of hard news and a rise in opinons, polls, blogs and other such things, which can just add up to a huge amount of white noise. i confess that i'm a novice when it comes to following political discourse.

Originally Posted by MxDx

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

To make a long story short, mass consensus does not dictate what is covered in the media and high stakes political races are good for TV ratings and the profits of media in general. If I were you, I'd start reading something else.

so does this explain the rise of punditry and prediction making? there does seem to be a lack of hard news and a rise in opinons, polls, blogs and other such things, which can just add up to a huge amount of white noise. i confess that i'm a novice when it comes to following political discourse.

Yes, every one of those elements is an industry, connected to a job, connected to money. So in that sense, we do not begrudge (or at least look silly trying to) the unpleasant effects of being engulfed in that "white noise." (Sorry for the mixing of metaphors.) That is why we suggest turning off the TV, the radio, the blogs, etc. It will only frustrate you. For Americans who feel more responsible for the turnout of our elections it is a bit harder. But there is no reason why as a Canadian you need to be investing in this political sideshow. Cheers.

Originally Posted by James50

The easy answer is simply to say consider the source. NYT gives its readership what it wants which is, whenever possible, slam the Republicans. You don't have to go much deeper than that. Presumably you have other sources to balance your news intake.

James50

Nice try, James. This is from the New York Post, one of the most conservative organs in the country.

"Obviously, the Democrats have their priorities perfectly in order.

For their part, the debate’s sponsors -- NBC, Politico and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation -- say the debate will air right after Obama’s speech.

Which means, in practical terms, that the GOP will have two hours to dissect Obama’s speech, rather than the usual 15 minutes of rebuttal."

The debate organizers were willing to move it to accommodate the President. Boehner made a completely phony excuse about unimportant votes that had to be taken.

Originally Posted by Odin

Irene disaster relief is making the Tea Party fools commit political mass suicide.


New York Republican threatens to withhold hurricane relief from her own district


I've read that Eric Cantor has made similar comments. Fools.

Freshman Republican Representative -- she will be an obvious candidate to be a one-term Congresscritter.

I have also seen statements by Governors Christie (R, NJ) and McDonnell (R, VA) that such is pure folly. We may see a split within the GOP.

Originally Posted by James50

The easy answer is simply to say consider the source. NYT gives its readership what it wants which is, whenever possible, slam the Republicans. You don't have to go much deeper than that. Presumably you have other sources to balance your news intake.

James50

The New York Times competes directly with a Murdoch rag.

...Journalism seems to attract left-leaning, secularist, intelligent people capable of reading between the lines.

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Unsatisfactory as both Parties are in adopting a revived Progressivism, the distinction between them is obvious. One Party seems intent at the least to preserve the reforms of the Progressive Era, the New Deal, and the Great Society; one would cast them off in the name of at best a new Gilded Age in the name of economic growth that might never be achieved on behalf of economic elites that exploit right-wing demagoguery on debased 'cultural' and repressive 'moral' issues. The Hard Right wants population growth (thus the hostility to abortion, contraception, and homosexuality) even if such is the ultimate Ponzi scheme.


But how far does the trend toward the Right continue? Does America go fascist or feudal? Does it replace reason with superstition? The last 3T has become a failure.

I would suggest that in the last thirty years both parties have dismantled nearly the entire legacy of the Progressive era and the New Deal. Anti-trust is a dead letter--that was the major Progressive achievement. The Wagner Act is no longer working. Glass Steagall was repealed with devastating consequences and the Obama Administration made no move to put it back in place. The minimum wage has fallen tremendously in real terms. The top tax rate has been cut by 2/3 since 1964. The SEC has become a joke. Most or all of the regulatory structure has been captured by those it was supposed to regulate.

What is left is far more the creation of the Great Society: high social security benefits (which the New Deal did not provide--they date from 1972, I believe), Medicare and Medicaid. These, unlike the New Deal's redistributive reforms, have a constituency. Also left over from the Progressive era is the Fed.

I still haven't gotten you to engage over Fascism. There will be no Fascism. Our society is totally unsuited to it temperamentally at this point. Nor do the Republicans need it.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

I would suggest that in the last thirty years both parties have dismantled nearly the entire legacy of the Progressive era and the New Deal. Anti-trust is a dead letter--that was the major Progressive achievement. The Wagner Act is no longer working. Glass Steagall was repealed with devastating consequences and the Obama Administration made no move to put it back in place. The minimum wage has fallen tremendously in real terms. The top tax rate has been cut by 2/3 since 1964. The SEC has become a joke. Most or all of the regulatory structure has been captured by those it was supposed to regulate.

What is left is far more the creation of the Great Society: high social security benefits (which the New Deal did not provide--they date from 1972, I believe), Medicare and Medicaid. These, unlike the New Deal's redistributive reforms, have a constituency. Also left over from the Progressive era is the Fed.

Money does not talk; it rules. We no longer have the competitive economy that made us great as a nation; we have an economy of trusts and cartels as tight as anything that the Gilded could have done. We used to have the redundancy of choice that ensured that no business could dictate the (low) standard of behavior for an industry. Independent businesses are being wiped out by chains. We end up with a few companies that become too big to fail, take high-stakes gambles that eventually fail, and eventually have to be bailed out. We have corporate bureaucrats who have no responsibility to employees but demand unconditional loyalty from those employees. Big Business has all the cards up its sleeve.

It may be paranoia on my part, but I see ominous trends. Our tycoons are as distant from the common man as any pharaoh was from the fellahin. The system of rewards for managers promotes kiss-up, kick-down management; they see only profit and loss and their own class privilege. I look at the executive behavior that I have heard of and I see unrestrained luxury as an objective -- luxury that goes even to trophy wives. Think of what happens to the older kids who are in their late teens as their father ditches his wife near 40 for some cute young thing. Sure, the kids still get some of the privileges of the class into which they are born, including the usual expectation of college education and graduate school, so they get MBAs or law degrees. The MBA degree enforces a culture of greed, and the most lucrative use of a law degree is corporate law as the 'intellectual hired guns' of the system. The kids are most likely to be a privileged elite with hurt feelings that can make no material sacrifices -- a dangerous combination.

Class segregation becomes as severe as racial segregation was in Apartheid-era South Africa. "Free enterprise" becomes a travesty except for the profit motive and the lust for privilege. How long can it go? Good question. It is contrary to the formalities of the old decencies of our Constitutional system of government.

I still haven't gotten you to engage over Fascism. There will be no Fascism. Our society is totally unsuited to it temperamentally at this point. Nor do the Republicans need it.

Until 2000 I thought that fascism was impossible in America. We had too long a heritage of formal democracy. We relied heavily upon small business that generally could do little to corrupt the political system as could the zaibatsu of Japan or the tight cartels of the Weimar Republic. The only overt fascists in America either pranced around in brown shirts or else burned crosses. Racism no longer had legal protection. Religious bigotry was un-American. Americans, sophisticated and educated as they are, could never fall for a fraudulent treatment of history as propaganda. Voters expected integrity from their elected officials and had a vibrant press to offer them awareness of any political or business figure going off the deep end. A figure like a George Wallace or a Jesse Helms became an object of ridicule.

We are taking people like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry seriously as Presidential candidates. Maybe we aren't so sophisticated as we think we are. Maybe the great heritage of Constitutional government and heroes from Samuel Adams to Martin Luther King are now "pearls before swine" to all too many of us -- and especially our economic elites who see those as hindrances to grabbing every asset in America and making every American not in their class a peon. We have figures like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist who believe that the checks and balances necessary for constitutional government are inconveniences to the "real democracy" that they want.

America is now one of the most inegalitarian of all "advanced industrial societies" (Russia is worse, probably because it has practically no trace of democracy left) ... and our elites now ask us to return to a more primitive way of government that guarantees gains for elites but nothing for the rest. We now have a hierarchical and inegalitarian social order to an extent that we have not known at the least in the northern US. To be sure, a pure plutocracy need not be fascist. It takes something more -- repression. We aren't there yet, but we are on the highway to (political) Hell if we let the sociopathic leaders of Big Business get their way.

Fascism isn't quite the same thing in all countries. The Japanese had no use for Wagnerian bombast; the Italians didn't quite get the samurai fantasy; the Germans didn't so much imitate Roman ways so much as they parodied them. American fascists have little use for anything so exotic. They would be 100% American -- the would have iconic images of George Washington, and not Frederick the Great or Scipio Africanus. They would assert the 'glory' of twangy country music over Mozart. As a rule, fascist 'culture' is dumbed-down and bowdlerized... with a heavy dose of superstition. Until I see otherwise I remain convinced that there is a fascism especially suited to the cultural heritage of a country. The Tea Party Cult shows much of what a fascist America could look like. I do not yet count it out. It can twist the paraphernalia of the Revolution that categorically rejected every trace of tyranny that it could reject into an ideology that shows contempt for the liberal ideas that the American Revolution made possible.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

It would seem to me that antagonism would be a continuation of the same approach used before which has led us to the fix we are in today.

And I'm saying those things don't make logical sense. Obama may temporarily comfort the base if he were confrontational but he will enrage everyone else. (Not everyone is on the same page with these left-wing solutions.) So in a sense we ARE ending up in the middle. Antagonizing other Americans (the approach you seem to think will make you feel better) will end up pushing us someplace else...

What we seem to have today is one extreme right-wing party that is emboldened to be confrontational and thinks there will be no ill effects. They get a pass from their supporters and many others for their behavior. Then we have a moderate party that is cowed and thinks it can win by giving in and being reasonable. All it gets instead is failure, criticism and loss of confidence.

Often the side that is bolder, wins the day. It is time for the left to be bolder. People admire folks who say what they believe, and you know where they stand. Many voters liked that about President Bush. What mattered to those voters was not whether he was right (they didn't care about that) but only that you knew where he stood, as he said. I don't think people know where Obama stands.

The left agenda is correct and consists of solutions to our problems. The problem is not that many voters will disagree with a left agenda boldly proclaimed and acted on. The problem is that the left leader has not been convincing enough to win them over. It's about time we had a leader who could do that. Nothing much can come from proposals Obama makes this Thursday that this current congress can pass. The Republicans won't pass them because they want Obama to fail. And even if such measures passed, they would only make the economy and everything else worse. The correct strategy now is to lay out a plan which Obama could carry out after 2012, assuming even then he might get a responsive congress. He has to convince people that Tea Party Republican inaction is the cause of our current problems. He has to make that crystal clear, and hope the voters will throw out the current congress, and reelect him, so he can carry out the agenda that will solve problems and not make them worse.

I don't know that he will do this. The best we can expect is probably he will challenge the opposition to support compromise proposals and pass them, making clear that they are as much to blame as him if they fail to pass them. I doubt this will work. The only thing that will really work for him, is just what the opposition thinks will work for them: win the next election. I say: lay out the cards and let the voters decide next November.

Originally Posted by Eric the Green

... It is time for the left to be bolder. People admire folks who say what they believe, and you know where they stand. Many voters liked that about President Bush. What mattered to those voters was not whether he was right (they didn't care about that) but only that you knew where he stood, as he said...

I swear to god you Boomers won't rest until this country is embroiled in a civil war and the rest of the world takes the opportunity to begin WWIII. I give...

Originally Posted by pbrower2a

Money does not talk; it rules. We no longer have the competitive economy that made us great as a nation; we have an economy of trusts and cartels as tight as anything that the Gilded could have done. We used to have the redundancy of choice that ensured that no business could dictate the (low) standard of behavior for an industry. Independent businesses are being wiped out by chains. We end up with a few companies that become too big to fail, take high-stakes gambles that eventually fail, and eventually have to be bailed out. We have corporate bureaucrats who have no responsibility to employees but demand unconditional loyalty from those employees. Big Business has all the cards up its sleeve.

It may be paranoia on my part, but I see ominous trends. Our tycoons are as distant from the common man as any pharaoh was from the fellahin. The system of rewards for managers promotes kiss-up, kick-down management; they see only profit and loss and their own class privilege. I look at the executive behavior that I have heard of and I see unrestrained luxury as an objective -- luxury that goes even to trophy wives. Think of what happens to the older kids who are in their late teens as their father ditches his wife near 40 for some cute young thing. Sure, the kids still get some of the privileges of the class into which they are born, including the usual expectation of college education and graduate school, so they get MBAs or law degrees. The MBA degree enforces a culture of greed, and the most lucrative use of a law degree is corporate law as the 'intellectual hired guns' of the system. The kids are most likely to be a privileged elite with hurt feelings that can make no material sacrifices -- a dangerous combination.

Class segregation becomes as severe as racial segregation was in Apartheid-era South Africa. "Free enterprise" becomes a travesty except for the profit motive and the lust for privilege. How long can it go? Good question. It is contrary to the formalities of the old decencies of our Constitutional system of government.



Until 2000 I thought that fascism was impossible in America. We had too long a heritage of formal democracy. We relied heavily upon small business that generally could do little to corrupt the political system as could the zaibatsu of Japan or the tight cartels of the Weimar Republic. The only overt fascists in America either pranced around in brown shirts or else burned crosses. Racism no longer had legal protection. Religious bigotry was un-American. Americans, sophisticated and educated as they are, could never fall for a fraudulent treatment of history as propaganda. Voters expected integrity from their elected officials and had a vibrant press to offer them awareness of any political or business figure going off the deep end. A figure like a George Wallace or a Jesse Helms became an object of ridicule.

We are taking people like Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and Rick Perry seriously as Presidential candidates. Maybe we aren't so sophisticated as we think we are. Maybe the great heritage of Constitutional government and heroes from Samuel Adams to Martin Luther King are now "pearls before swine" to all too many of us -- and especially our economic elites who see those as hindrances to grabbing every asset in America and making every American not in their class a peon. We have figures like Karl Rove and Grover Norquist who believe that the checks and balances necessary for constitutional government are inconveniences to the "real democracy" that they want.

America is now one of the most inegalitarian of all "advanced industrial societies" (Russia is worse, probably because it has practically no trace of democracy left) ... and our elites now ask us to return to a more primitive way of government that guarantees gains for elites but nothing for the rest. We now have a hierarchical and inegalitarian social order to an extent that we have not known at the least in the northern US. To be sure, a pure plutocracy need not be fascist. It takes something more -- repression. We aren't there yet, but we are on the highway to (political) Hell if we let the sociopathic leaders of Big Business get their way.

Fascism isn't quite the same thing in all countries. The Japanese had no use for Wagnerian bombast; the Italians didn't quite get the samurai fantasy; the Germans didn't so much imitate Roman ways so much as they parodied them. American fascists have little use for anything so exotic. They would be 100% American -- the would have iconic images of George Washington, and not Frederick the Great or Scipio Africanus. They would assert the 'glory' of twangy country music over Mozart. As a rule, fascist 'culture' is dumbed-down and bowdlerized... with a heavy dose of superstition. Until I see otherwise I remain convinced that there is a fascism especially suited to the cultural heritage of a country. The Tea Party Cult shows much of what a fascist America could look like. I do not yet count it out. It can twist the paraphernalia of the Revolution that categorically rejected every trace of tyranny that it could reject into an ideology that shows contempt for the liberal ideas that the American Revolution made possible.

Well, thank you--now we are getting somewhere.

I certainly agree that Bachmann, Perry and Palin represent an unprecedented danger to this country, particularly because of their anti-intellectualism, which amounts to anti-rationality. But that's a completely different thing than Fascism or National Socialism, which prided themselves on being scientific (even if some of the science was pseudo-science). But let me return to my main point: Fascism and Nazism (especially the latter) were based on discipline and order. No political movement in America today is interested in either one. The Tea Party wants to return to the law of the jungle, which is why they remind me so much of the Gilded.

In the late 1960s Fascism became a generic term for "anything I don't like." I think it's better to call things by their right names.

Continuing with the question of the fate of Progressive and New Deal reforms--the FDIC is still in place, thank heaven. But most of them are dead letters, as is the idea that the government has a responsibility to provide public power. Another Great Society reform that has been weakened and is hanging by a thread is the EPA. (I know it passed under Nixon--although he didn't like it.) A great many liberals have mistakenly assumed that because these are good reforms, they must continue. Another critical myth, very popular in the MSM, is that any trend that is happening must be a good thing.

Non Farm Payrolls came in for August. Only gained 17k jobs the entire month. Unemployment still at 9.1%. July job gains revised downward from 117k to 85k jobs.

While it isn't a negative number, still its just terrible.

Edited. There were 17k jobs in the private sector. The net was zero jobs, I'm guessing offset by government jobs lost.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Nice try, James. This is from the New York Post, one of the most conservative organs in the country.

"Obviously, the Democrats have their priorities perfectly in order.

For their part, the debate’s sponsors -- NBC, Politico and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation -- say the debate will air right after Obama’s speech.

Which means, in practical terms, that the GOP will have two hours to dissect Obama’s speech, rather than the usual 15 minutes of rebuttal."

The debate organizers were willing to move it to accommodate the President. Boehner made a completely phony excuse about unimportant votes that had to be taken.

Well shame on me for jumping to conclusions. Glad to see you are spreading your wings a bit.

James50

Originally Posted by Hutch74

Non Farm Payrolls came in for August. Only gained 17k jobs the entire month. Unemployment still at 9.1%. July job gains revised downward from 117k to 85k jobs.

While it isn't a negative number, still its just terrible.

Edited. There were 17k jobs in the private sector. The net was zero jobs, I'm guessing offset by government jobs lost.

The employment situation is disastrous and not getting better. Obama, Boehner, Reid, Pelosi. McConnell need to get everyone together and agree on a plan. I am sick of speeches. We either need a dramatic increase in government or a dramatic decrease. The status quo isn't working.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

We either need a dramatic increase in government or a dramatic decrease. The status quo isn't working.James50

Absolutely 100% right.

Originally Posted by KaiserD2

Well, thank you--now we are getting somewhere.

I may be more of an alarmist. Until we get the full Regeneracy that implies a clear movement toward a more pragmatic, rational, and humane order, we remain in danger of a false Regeneracy that creates power for the State or for entrenched elites at the expense of everyone else. I don't like using the political f-word, but I see plenty of authoritarian tendencies within the Republican Party and the Tea Party Cult.

I certainly agree that Bachmann, Perry and Palin represent an unprecedented danger to this country, particularly because of their anti-intellectualism, which amounts to anti-rationality. But that's a completely different thing than Fascism or National Socialism, which prided themselves on being scientific (even if some of the science was pseudo-science). But let me return to my main point: Fascism and Nazism (especially the latter) were based on discipline and order. No political movement in America today is interested in either one. The Tea Party wants to return to the law of the jungle, which is why they remind me so much of the Gilded.

If the Hard Right is ferociously anti-intellectual, it is hardly averse to using the black art of psychological manipulation. The falsification of history and manipulation of such anti-intellectualism as creationism are part of the plan. It has no qualms about corrupting the media (FoX Newspeak Channel), sponsoring mean-spirited populism (Rush Limbaugh), promoting mass fear (Glenn Beck), and even corrupting academia (the involvement of the Koch Brothers in selecting 'appropriate' professors of economics at Florida State University). Say what you want about the MBA culture that now dominates Corporate America, even it is rational.

Right-wing movements are duplicitous about reason. They want control of intellectual life to the extent that they command learning so that it is good for churning out industrial product, especially war materiel of high quality. Applied science has always been compatible with totalitarian movements, whether fascism, Communism, Nazism, Ba'athism, and Islamism. Cutting-edge science requires people capable of thinking outside the box (Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Freud, Einstein), and such people create trouble for dictatorial orders.

I look at 1984 as a good description to some extent of all totalitarian movements -- dishonesty, duplicity, obscurantism, and hypocrisy. Styles of tyranny may differ, but I can see all of the aforesaid in the American Hard Right in that there are clear Insiders who have knowledge that Outsiders are not to know. Our Hard Right so far dares not show racism or religious bigotry... but I can imagine millions of Americans finding themselves with no happy role under an anti-democratic regime that promotes mass ignorance as evidence of loyalty. So far the Hard Right has carefully avoided violent rhetoric among the leadership (the infamous Britt article that suggests that Dubya and Company had fourteen fascist traits fails but missed well-organized violence as essential to fascism). Of course, economic elites who feel threats from either left-wing populism at any time or right-wing populism that takes the anti-capitalist and revolutionary rhetoric seriously have always shown the proclivity to turn to hired thugs to do the dirty work.

American fascism, if it ever arrived, would be above all else American -- maybe selectively American, endorsing much that doesn't travel well. American football, country music, and Protestant fundamentalism don't travel well. But football might come at the expense of baseball, country music at the expense of jazz (the music least amenable to totalitarian control because it is improvised), Protestant fundamentalism at the expense of even Mormonism.

In the late 1960s Fascism became a generic term for "anything I don't like." I think it's better to call things by their right names.

Right --- going even so far as to describe baseball strikeouts as "fascist" (as in the movie Major League). Fascism is a dirty word, and one can be sure that people with most of the tendencies of Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Franco, Pavelic, Codreanu, and Laval no more call themselves fascists than rapists think of themselves as rapists. Evil needs to be exposed for what it is even if the evil-doers live under the delusion that they are benefactors to the people that they abuse. Calling such thugs as the KKK "fascist" rips off the well-deserved recognition of distinctness of those brutes against, for example, Francisco Franco's Falange. There was a huge difference between Franco and Hitler -- right?

Continuing with the question of the fate of Progressive and New Deal reforms--the FDIC is still in place, thank heaven. But most of them are dead letters, as is the idea that the government has a responsibility to provide public power. Another Great Society reform that has been weakened and is hanging by a thread is the EPA. (I know it passed under Nixon--although he didn't like it.) A great many liberals have mistakenly assumed that because these are good reforms, they must continue. Another critical myth, very popular in the MSM, is that any trend that is happening must be a good thing.

FDIC insurance saved us from a full replay of the Great Depression. I could easily make the case that backing the banks -- something that Herbert Hoover could never do without being accused of 'crony capitalism' -- stopped the Depression from getting even worse than it had been. I remain convinced that had Hoover backed the banks, then the Great Depression would not begun with as severe a meltdown as it did, and the recovery, slow as it was, would have started from conditions of early 1931 instead of those of the winter of 1932/1933. Generous Social Security payments may have saved some grandchildren from genuine hunger.

Thank God for liberalism! Or thank -- whoever!

John Huntsman has produced an economic plan. Some of you left wingers fire away:

Republican Presidential candidate and former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman is lagging in the polls, but the economic agenda he rolled out this week may start getting him more attention. And deservedly so.

The heart of the plan lowers all tax rates on individuals and businesses. Mr. Huntsman would create three personal income tax rates—8%, 14% and 23%—and pay for this in a "revenue-neutral" way by eliminating "all deductions and credits." This tracks with the proposals of the bipartisan Bowles-Simpson commission and others for a flatter, more efficient tax system.

That means economically inefficient tax carve outs for mortgage interest, municipal bonds, child credits and green energy subsidies would at last be closed. The double tax on capital gains and dividends would be expunged as would the Alternative Minimum Tax. The corporate tax rate falls to 25% from 35%, and American businesses would be taxed on a territorial system to encourage firms to return capital parked in overseas operations.

Mr. Huntsman would repeal two of President Obama's most economically debilitating creations, ObamaCare and the Dodd-Frank financial regulation law. Mr. Huntsman has it right when he says, "Dodd-Frank perpetuates 'too big to fail' by codifying a regime that incentivizes firms to become too big to fail." He'd also repeal a Bush-era regulatory mistake, the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting rules, which have added millions of dollars of costs to businesses with little positive effect.

Mr. Huntsman says he'd also bring to heel the hyper-regulators at the Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration and the National Labor Relations Board, all of which are suppressing job-creation. The Huntsman energy policy promises to block impediments to producing oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska (see editorial above), while encouraging the safe deployment of fracking for natural gas in the states. Mr. Huntsman dabbled with green energy subsidies as Governor when those were the political fashion, but perhaps he's learned watching the failures of the last two years.

This plan really outlines the battle ground and sounds better to me than the government of the last 2-1/2 years. It might even stimulate a Regeneracy. My only beef is that I don't think you repeal Obamacare without something to replace it.

James50

Originally Posted by James50

John Huntsman has produced an economic plan. Some of you left wingers fire away:



This plan really outlines the battle ground and sounds better to me than the government of the last 2-1/2 years. It might even stimulate a Regeneracy. My only beef is that I don't think you repeal Obamacare without something to replace it.

James50

The RW solution for everything: "MORE TAX CUTS and gut regulations because public safety gets in the way of profit".

Whenever someone calls corporate leaders "job creators" I want to strangle them. That attitude is the CAUSE OF THE WHOLE PROBLEM.

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

But there is no reason why as a Canadian you need to be investing in this political sideshow. Cheers.

understood, please don't take me posting as passing judgement on Americans. i only become interested due to the closeness of our two countries geographically and economically and i'd hate to see yours fall into a new dark ages based over some ridiculous ideological turf war.

Originally Posted by Odin

The RW solution for everything: "MORE TAX CUTS and gut regulations because public safety gets in the way of profit".

Whenever someone calls corporate leaders "job creators" I want to strangle them. That attitude is the CAUSE OF THE WHOLE PROBLEM.

I don't think you should describe this plan as a tax cut. It follows pretty close to Simpson-Bowles and would be revenue neutral in the short run because of eliminating all the deductions. If it stimulated growth, it might actually generate revenue.

James50

Here's another article reflecting the corporate control of the mainstream media and effective, if non-governmental, censorship.

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2011/04...american-know/

One of the realities of American politics is that the paid machine of distorting anti-science syndrome suffering haters of a livable economic system works the interpreters, HARD! When the Tea Party mobilizes 400 people in front of a scowling Abraham Lincoln at the Reflecting Pool at Faux News’ Beck and call, America’s real media shows up … in force. To see one salaried journalist for every 10-20 Tea Party activists isn’t an unusual ratio. Front page stories, CNN lead items, radio items galore will all result. And, media outlets will be deluged with complaints that they didn’t give this “mass event” adequate coverage.
10,000 of America’s most impassioned youth come to Washington, DC … meet with the President … have people being arrested at the Congress … and reminds one of the question “if a tree fell in the forest and noone heard, did it make a noise”.

When I and other Boomers came of age, things were quite different. The press took its role as national watchdog seriously. While it was far from infallible, it could be trusted as to motives, and would cover genuinely newsworthy events fairly. No one who read the newspapers or watched television could believe that there was no major protest activity against the Vietnam War. If the press as it exists today had been in existence then, only the biggest protests would have been covered at all, and any violence that occurred at them would have been emphasized over anything else. The people who relied on the media would have been left with the impression that only a few crazies opposed the war, and most Americans were solidly behind President Johnson (who would probably have won a second term in 1968 as a result). Those who opposed the war would have become dispirited, thinking they were part of a tiny minority that had no chance to prevail.

Today, as the above article observes, even the tiniest protest anywhere by the Tea Party over anything gets a big megaphone, creating the impression of something huge and powerful. At the same time, anything from the left short of occupying a state capital gets little or no coverage, creating the impression of something nonexistent or impotent. It's an illusion.

There has been a protest by environmental groups at the White House for quite some time now, with participants in the tens of thousands, a meeting with President Obama, arrests, and so on. How many of you have heard of it? If you get your main news by searching on line, probably you have -- we don't have true government-imposed censorship in this country and the truth is still out there. But if you get your main news from CNN, MSNBC, network TV, the major newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times), or even NPR, then it's likely you haven't, and certain that it hasn't been prominently brought to your attention.

We have protests happening in every city over jobs, demanding that the government adopt policies to put people back to work. Same observation -- I'll bet many of you didn't even know that.

The major news outlets, except NPR, are all owned and controlled by a corporate industry with a political agenda of its own: to maximize corporate profits and prevent any government action that would spread the wealth. NPR is of course not corporate-owned, and yet it is dependent on contributions in part from corporations and in part from the government, and both those sources are dependent on NPR also not crossing a certain line in its coverage. These outlets are not the only source of news, but they are the loudest and most prominent, and the only ones that many people ever hear from.

It's hard for Boomers in particular to get our minds around this fact. But it is a fact. The free press we knew in our younger days is gone. Or rather, it's not gone, but it gets lost in the storm of disinformation that is put out by the major news media.

S&P Just Rated A Bundle Of Subprime Mortgages Higher Than The U.S.

Remember when Standard & Poors gave triple-A ratings to subprime mortgages that would eventually go bad and nearly bring down the entire economy?

It's happening again.

Bloomberg reports:

S&P is poised to provide AAA grades to 59 percent of Springleaf Mortgage Loan Trust 2011-1, a set of bonds tied to $497 million lent to homeowners with below-average credit scores and almost no equity in their properties.

This tone-deaf move comes weeks after S&P downgraded U.S. debt. While it makes sense that corporate bonds may be safer than sovereigns, we can't figure out how subprime mortgages are triple-A.

It's been almost 4 years since the financial crisis and NOTHING has changed. "Too Big To Fail" has unleashed the ultimate moral hazard. If I were dictator all these rating agencies would be shut down for fraud, a lot of Banksters would be stewing in prison, and "mortgage-backed-securities" would be banned.

I get the feeling that these rating agencies are just tools the Corporate Elites use to manipulate things.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

Here's another article reflecting the corporate control of the mainstream media and effective, if non-governmental, censorship.

http://getenergysmartnow.com/2011/04...american-know/



When I and other Boomers came of age, things were quite different. The press took its role as national watchdog seriously. While it was far from infallible, it could be trusted as to motives, and would cover genuinely newsworthy events fairly. No one who read the newspapers or watched television could believe that there was no major protest activity against the Vietnam War. If the press as it exists today had been in existence then, only the biggest protests would have been covered at all, and any violence that occurred at them would have been emphasized over anything else. The people who relied on the media would have been left with the impression that only a few crazies opposed the war, and most Americans were solidly behind President Johnson (who would probably have won a second term in 1968 as a result). Those who opposed the war would have become dispirited, thinking they were part of a tiny minority that had no chance to prevail.

Today, as the above article observes, even the tiniest protest anywhere by the Tea Party over anything gets a big megaphone, creating the impression of something huge and powerful. At the same time, anything from the left short of occupying a state capital gets little or no coverage, creating the impression of something nonexistent or impotent. It's an illusion.

There has been a protest by environmental groups at the White House for quite some time now, with participants in the tens of thousands, a meeting with President Obama, arrests, and so on. How many of you have heard of it? If you get your main news by searching on line, probably you have -- we don't have true government-imposed censorship in this country and the truth is still out there. But if you get your main news from CNN, MSNBC, network TV, the major newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times), or even NPR, then it's likely you haven't, and certain that it hasn't been prominently brought to your attention.

We have protests happening in every city over jobs, demanding that the government adopt policies to put people back to work. Same observation -- I'll bet many of you didn't even know that.

The major news outlets, except NPR, are all owned and controlled by a corporate industry with a political agenda of its own: to maximize corporate profits and prevent any government action that would spread the wealth. NPR is of course not corporate-owned, and yet it is dependent on contributions in part from corporations and in part from the government, and both those sources are dependent on NPR also not crossing a certain line in its coverage. These outlets are not the only source of news, but they are the loudest and most prominent, and the only ones that many people ever hear from.

It's hard for Boomers in particular to get our minds around this fact. But it is a fact. The free press we knew in our younger days is gone. Or rather, it's not gone, but it gets lost in the storm of disinformation that is put out by the major news media.

This is why many people my age don't bother protesting, the Corporate Media is just going to ignore it.

Originally Posted by MxDx

Originally Posted by summer in the fall

But there is no reason why as a Canadian you need to be investing in this political sideshow. Cheers.

understood, please don't take me posting as passing judgement on Americans. i only become interested due to the closeness of our two countries geographically and economically and i'd hate to see yours fall into a new dark ages based over some ridiculous ideological turf war.

Neither do we. Best...

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

It's hard for Boomers in particular to get our minds around this fact. But it is a fact. The free press we knew in our younger days is gone. Or rather, it's not gone, but it gets lost in the storm of disinformation that is put out by the major news media.

I am not a regular watcher of MSNBC night time lineup, but are you saying that people like Rachel Maddow and Ed Schulz are being muzzled by their corporate masters? Its hard for me to imagine that.

James50

what solution is there to "restoring sanity" so to speak?