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pfnelkak -- a 30% unemployment rate could serve as an alarm clock. However, the corporate media likes to act as a snooze alarm.
Richardofjefferson -- Do you have any samples of the left ridiculing Nader?
Penelak -- Thom has been saying for a long time that Obama will be impeached if repugs take control of the house and senate. He said it was the number one thing on the repugs to do list.
It has nothing to do with Obama abusing the presidency less than any other President.
I've been saying for some time now that a revolution is coming; it will have to happen; it will be violent and it will be bloody. And it won't end well for the United States or the rest of the world. Mark my words.
When the wolves are guarding the hen house, don't expect dinner. When the thieves make the rules, don't expect a paycheck. When the people stay asleep, don't expect a change.
Alice in la la land
Mitch McConnell: We Will Stop "Liberal Onslaught"
Our Constitution is a social, liberal contract. need I say more?
God knows Dems have many flaws but GOP's wealth favoring-anti middle class policies and laws ( Citizens United - deregulation, busting unions- creating huge un funded debt ) is killing working families - lowering wages. Well connected Powerful corps / billionaires run our country ! GOP has been trying to cut and or privatize SS, medicare even disabled benefits for years. These progrmans are NOT welfare.. Rercipients paid into SS / medicare for years Congress are ones who live off the gov't , receive great pay and & benefits for not much work.
FICA deductions stands for ' Federal insurance' .
US is going down the tubes Run by Greed & hate Since 1981 Reaganomics , deregulation, removing common sense regulation, to reign in Greed . Wages are down in real dollars , .labor unions gone, GOP gives Massive Corp welfare aka tax cuts, loopholes & subsides, Long failed wars that wasted trillions , our soldiers coming home maimed or broken .
Thom, without democratic popular consent, how do you and Sen. Sanders plan to achieve this lofty goal of a new "New Deal”? The political will is absolute zero in both legislative house to help the middle class, or any class with the obvious exception of the rich and influential classes of American society.
Thom, I love what you're selling, but the rhetoric falls empty without established well organized support. The divisive nature of the well- constructed distractions like identity politics that burns up tons of misdirected activist energy on both sides of an issue. This waste of energy should be focused on the very things you're talking about, but the emotional issues dividing us - Keeping both, Democrats and Republican, bottom 80%, distracted from issues both sides agree upon like jobs, unjustifiable international trade deals, military spending and other common concerns. Ralph Nader has been trying to establish these connection, and I should add being ridiculed, mostly from the left, for his efforts to find common ground between Democrats and Republican.
I would think the first step in an ambitious plan like Sen. Bernie is proposing to the American public. Should start with an education campaign aimed at both rank-n-file Democrats and Republicans. With the goals of trying tear down these well-designed constructs of manipulation, designed to distract, divide and frustrate American society into allowing essential commonly supported issues like jobs, infrastructure and the out of control economy to go unchallenged by a united Democrat and Republican citizenry.
Without a well-considered strategies to develop organized support, the rhetoric devolves into an empty grand notion with its only goal being to inspire partisan base cheerleading and meaningless idealistic speculation of how good it could be if only….
Obama is abusing the office of the Presidency. He will be impeached. You heard it here first.
A big drop down is happening. I am still hoping the real estate side ( www.temeculaareahomes.com ) would cope up to its original status.
We already have a federally funded job program-its called the pentagon. There is a reason why we have perpetual wars in the middle east. It keeps the tax dollars flowing to the war industries. When you look at the way we killed people in the middle east and pakistan, it makes perfect sense. Killed them indiscriminately with the actual targets so as to fostered hatred for the US, so there will always be a fresh supply of new taliban warriors, so there will always be a fresh supply of new ISIS fighters. This is how you keep the money flowing to the war industries. War is good for business!!!!
Would it be a violation of our trade agreements to put tollbooths on the roads around major seaports, and only charge 18-wheelers to go through those tolls? Something like $2,000 per axle, until companies got the idea that it would be in their best financial interest to move the factory back onto this side of the tollbooth.
It wouldn't be a tariff, because we're not taxing the product itself. Just the means by which it is delivered to the American comsumers.
Or, the individual states with the ports, like California, could put a $1,000 per gallon tax on diesel. The trucks and trains have to fill up sooner or later.
ONEWORLDATPEACE-
Well said.
Thom--- We need your investigative hounds again. Find out who's again pushing for a constitutional convention to get rid of our bill of rights. 34 states needed, 31 signed. Have a website to go to and list states, reps., backers, co. supporting such actions. Just follow the money.
We have to start saying like it is, the Reublicans WANT TO REMOVE THE MIDDLE CLASS! I wish somebody would make the public charge out loud and ask them to prove they are not intentionally sabotaging the American economy because the middle class has been on AUSTERITY since REAGAN by Tax cuts for the rich, loss of Federal Education supports to State Colleges, cutting funding for infrastructure construction and MAINTENANCE and sending jobs overseas and pretending they didn't know what was happening.
HOWEVER!
THEY KNEW what they were doing and if what THEY'VE DONE is any indication of INTENTION, IT'S CLEAR THAT 30 years of conservative economics THAT have gutted the middle class and we should thank the Repugnicans for pointing out the failure of CAPITALISM being "good" for the middle class as THEY TRY TO DO IT AGAIN!!! because it can't be denied!
How can they live with themselves with so much misery and want in this country with half our kids qualifying for free lunches and one quarter of our families not being able to afford a CHECKING ACCOUNT!
HOMELESS SCHOOLKIDS ?? Did they make a lifestyle choice?
HOMELESS VETERANS ?? They made the wrong lifestyle choice when they served this corporate abomination masquerading as a Democracy where tax cuts have to be paid for with the lives of Veterans.
Thom: The so called deficit is a made up number that simply respresents the difference between what the Federal Gov't collects in Taxes via the IRS (BTW, that money is accounted for and is then discarded. There isn't an account that the IRS sends it to to be used again) and the dollars it creates when it pays its bills. A monetarily sovereign nation like the USA doesn't need to borrow the sovereign curency it created. A non-monitarily sovereign entity like you, me, State, and Local Governments need dollars to pay our bills. We earn those dollars by working. State a Local Governments earn their dollars via taxes. When you and I, State and Local Governments "earn" less than we spend we then have a deficit. It is impossible for a monetarily sovereign entity like The Federal Government to have a defict. It creates dollars every time it pays its bills. It's interesting that I first heard about Monetary Sovereignty a few years back when you had someone on your radio show talk about Modern Monetary Theory. I'm wondering why you haven't done more shows about MMT and/or Monetary Sovereignty?
ine of the ugliest nugget of cynical wisdom is "money talks."
Did you know that in the constitution of the Confederacy, which is just a modification of the U.S. Constitution, both mentions of the general welfare were removed? They also removed "provide for the common defence", a grave mistake as it turns out.
I'm working on an SF novel (which I'm sure I will never get done) that's intended to show off some of my ideas on improving the U.S. Constitution.
One of those would set the number of representatives at 5 times the number of states. I realize that would make for a small House, but there are other aspects to it that aren't important here.
Another is requiring that for a territory to be admitted as a state, it would have to have, say, 1.6 times the population of an average House district (so that it gets rounded up to 2 representatives). So if Wyoming were the last state to be admitted, it would have to choose between waiting until it has enough population, becoming part of another state, and taking on more territory. That would be negotiated.
But I came up with a phrasing of the rule that would not just put a floor on state population, but also effectively put a ceiling on it.
Because of the first idea, admitting a state adds 5 representatives, but if this new state gets apportioned fewer than 5, the other states get some more representatives. This means the average district gets smaller.
However, if California were the last state to get admitted, the other 49 states would have 245 representatives (49 x 5). Adding one state adds 5 representatives, but California would get 34, so the other 49 states end up with only 216, and the average district would get bigger. It's possible that the increase of the average district would put some existing state below the minimum (presuming every other state was legally admitted to begin with).
So now we can put that ceiling in place by disallowing admission of a state if an immediate reapportionment would put any state below the minimum. This would force a negotiation to either break up the over-sized territory (and eventually admit the pieces as separate smaller states) or change borders of the smallest existing states. Either way, state populations get evened out a little.
If enacted now, the rule would have no effect until the United States was on the verge of admitting a 51st state. Without that circumstance, the only way to force some change would be occasionally push a state out to territory status (maybe on the 250th anniversary of admission?), with the intention of quickly readmitting it, so that the readmission could be negotiated.
I pledge allegiance to the flag.
Of the United Gun Club of America.
And to the Oligarchy for which it stands.
One nation under Capitalism
Available for purchase
With Liberty and Justice for the Wealthy
hiding behind political parties provides perfect cover when you are selling out the rest!
Thom, this is disingenuous political posturing from the Democrats. These cynical political games played by the Democrats, operate as farcical tools, to stave off political suicide is unworthy of acknowledgement. The token opposition to the TPP after 14 years of negotiation is only worthy of contempt. When you consider, that Democrats are no longer in a position to stop it.
After conceding the House in 2010 and then the Senate in 2014, Democrats, after being politically neutered, must have been granted permission from their financial backers that it’s now okay to oppose the TPP in hopes of political survival. With the business interest of the US investing billions in 2014 elections, thank you Supreme Court, the mandate to pass the TPP was made clear. Until after the 2014 election, Democrats remained in political limbo hoping to avoid any votes on TPP legislation. Now with pressure off and no real political influence, Democrats can lobby against the TPP without the worry of alienating their campaign contributors, or the ones that count anyway.
My hope is that the Democratic Party would be headed to political obsolescence with the opportunity for a social democracy party to develop from the demise of donkeys, but the left leaning Americans along with the “left” media keep falling into the delusional trap that the Democratic Party still acts as the party of the people. It is literally the definition of insanity to keep putting our faith in the existing American political system, and expecting any result other than failure for the majority of Americans is bat fecal crazy.
Baffled, frustrated and unamused by these apologetics for the Democratic Party.
There is this phenomena where everything is counterintuitive in that only Reagan, for example, could've gotten the START treaties passed because he was Ronald Reagan. George H.W. Bush said at the time that "all the blockheads and dummies are for Reagan so only Reagan can do this". IOW, if a Democrat had tried those blockheads and dummies would've said, "Oh, Democrat peacenik, no way!" but because he was Ronald Reagan they accepted it.
Similarly, Bill Clinton effected more privatization than any other president but nobody noticed because he was a Democrat. Everybody still thinks he was a liberal. He could get away with it like a Republican couldn't.
The most liberal lefty president since WW II was Richard Nixon - and largely that's because the people's social movements were most mobilized then - like the rich people are well organized and mobilized now and were in Clinton's time - but also, it may had helped that he was Richard Nixon and thus the conservative "silent majority" then stayed silent and didn't put up a howl when he effected a lot of liberal, lefty policies..
Similarly with Obama, he can do all this right wing shit and nobody will notice because he's Obama, liberals won't notice and think that if he does a lot of oligarchic shit that that must then be "good" oligarchic shit because he's Barack Obama.
What Thom just described is precisely why I couldn’t care less about listening to President O’bummer’s soaring rhetoric, which in reality, is just a lot of hot air. His efforts to fast-track this massive piece of legislative excrement is a major factor in what identifies our president as a corporate fascist. This next election I will refuse to vote for ANY presidential candidate who gets propped up by corporate money. O'bummer got propped up by corporate money and look what we've got. I ain't going back for seconds. - AIW
Hey Thom, if you read these blogs, with Obama wanting to go out with a bang, I bet, if you let your investigative hounds loose, they will be able to find a connection between closing ANWR here in Alaska with the Arabs lowering the price of oil. They want to keep control of the oil price and shut down U.S. production at the same time. Obama had to have made some kind of deal.