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Marc says "When you get down to it, energy is really a far greater concern for national security than violating the Constitution." Respectfully, I disagree. There's enough room for 'em both at the top of that heap…
I look at it this way: it doesn't really matter whether constitutional violations or drilling & tracking are more directly linked to our demise, because in the end, it's the same end result. We're still dead. So before that happens, let's try for that new amendment to the Constitution so we can have "Citizens United" overturned. Then at long last, maybe we can start gettin' some serious stuff done. - Alice IW
P.S. Enough of Bundy already! Nothin' personal, Marc; it's just that I'm all Bundied out. Know what I mean?
Marc dear comrade, I may be an athiest but it grieves me to live in a culture where nothing is sacred. I may not be inclined to worship a god or diety, but I've worshipped other things like mountains and rivers. - AIW
Matt, it's all in the framing of the message, or the semantics. Thanks to the brainwashing Americans have been subjected to over the past several decades, via corporatized media, the mere mention of socialism, or anything socialized, is enough to send a "sizable percentage" of our populous into a full tilt-panic attack. Uh-oh… evil socialism! AAAAAAGGGHHHHH!
But if you frame the topic differently and simply ask people if they want non-profit, universal healthcare, the overwhelming majority give thumbs up. Ditto with social security & medicare, ditto with the minimum wage, ditto unemployment benefits extension… on and on it goes, Matt. So what you see or hear on the surface is not always what you get.
What you're missing is that the Kings and Masters of this New World Order have nothing vested here in the U.S. anymore. With their twisted, dumbed-down version of the "news" hammered into our collective consciousness, they've got much of our citizenry under their spell, convinced that government is evil, that government can't do anything right, that everything has to be privatized, that anything our government can do The Market can do better. But don't believe it. That is a dangerous lie their little puppet pundits keep telling us. To illustrate my point, I'll begin with what privatization has done to healthcare here in America.
Unlike you sir, I happen to be old enough to recall a time when healthcare in this country was affordable. In the fifties & sixties while I was growing up, doctor bills were no big deal. Medical bills got paid just like the electric bill or the water bill. It wasn't universal tax-funded healthcare but back in those days, healthcare and health insurance were nonprofit. Consequently nobody was bankrupted or left destitute by medical bills. That's before healthcare became for-profit and morphed into the extortion racket it is today. Insurance company death panels decide who lives and who dies. People are losing everything, even their lives, because of it. This is what privatization has done to healthcare, here in the good ole USA. "Your money or your life!"
I remember attending tax-supported public school where books, writing paper, writing utensils, art supplies, musical instruments, sports gear, etc. etc. were all paid for by the state. Now teachers and parents are forced to dig into their pockets for things their property taxes used to pay for. Beyond that, charter schools get to pick and choose their pupils. Unlike tax-funded public schools, private for-profit charter schools are not required to accept all students. so that those with disabilities, learning problems or special needs can be excluded.
That's what privatization is all about. Exclusion. Some folks in, some folks out.
I get so tired of hearing conservatives spouting off the same old talking points with their self-serving, fictitious spin on everything. How stridently you keep insisting a "sizable percentage" of my fellow Americans reject core progressive values! No matter how stridently the message is delivered, it's still hogwash. Power elites, through their recruits and their enablers, have been lying to us for decades about what the majority of us thinks and desires. I hate to break it to ya Matt, but it's nothing but hogwash.
I'm sick to death of you conservatives whining and bitching about the ACA. It's not anywhere close to what we really need, Matt, but it's helped a lot of people anyway (including me and my husband) and it's still a step in the right direction. Those who opt out of the ACA are forced to pay a tax penalty which, I'll admit, does piss me off. But it's way less than the cost of an insurance premium. Many of us have benefitted from the ACA, however, and are much better off than we were without it. If you don't like it, Matt, that's too bad.
And for your information, we progressives aren't trying to "help" people who don't want our "help"; we're just trying to protect ourselves from these damn predators our esteemed "public servants" have set loose upon the public, via deregulation, consolidation and privatization.
Earth to Matt! Time to wake up. - Aliceinwonderland
:-)
Thank you DAnneMarc! By the way I was wondering how much one's income would have to be in order to have to pay $70,000 in taxes. Unless, one's wife was making a whole lot more than the husband it just wouldn't make sense if ones salary was around $60,000 or less.
http://primaryschoolteachersalary.com/IL/Chicago/salary/Catholic-School-...
http://primaryschoolteachersalary.com/1/1/salary/Middle-School-Teacher-S...
I suppose a combined income of $200,000 and a 35% tax rate would make it $70,000 tax. But, what? No write offs to lower the effective tax rate? So, if one had write offs to bring the effective tax rate down to say...20%...that would make a $70000 tax have to have been on a combined income of $350,000. So, if one earned only $60,000 that would mean the wife would have to make $290,000. Yes, there could be other income...like investments, I suppose.
But then there is this:
http://www.isbe.net/research/pdfs/teacher_salary_12-13.pdf
and this (2005 data)
http://counciloakmontessori.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/0611ChicagoSc...
Those who voted for Romney are either brainwashed idiots, uniformed idiots, a combination of the two or one percenters or one percent wannabes and their suck asses.
There always needs to be a public education campaign to build a movement before much action can take place. Noam Chomsky talked of how, when he started his campaign against the Viet Nam war in the early '60s, two or three people would show up and they usually came to sock him in the jaw. Four or five years later, the number of Americans opposing the war has grown to almost a majority. Another five years and it is, in fact, a substantial majority. One must always have patience with the benighted.
The `ACA is a very conservative plan, it's Mitt Romney's plan, Richard Nixon's proposed plan and the Heritage Foundation's proposed plan. Its purpose is to mandate people's taking responsibility for their own healthcare instead of having the insured effectively pay for the emergency care of the uninsured - which is a stupid idea when healthcare has become a luxury of the well to do. Much better would be a single payer system.
Anyway, I don't think you speak for anybody, Matt. Pretty much all but a very few Americans have the same concerns, they only disagree on solutions. The Tea Party, the militias at the Bundy ranch and the Occupy groups all agree on the problem as corporate control and money corrupting politics only the two former, the Tea Party and the militias, are stupidly brainwashed into supporting the corporate agenda - in response to their outrage at the corporate agenda.
Palindromedary ~ No, my friend! No! I did not know that little fact! However, since you mentioned it... It makes perfect sense. If you remember what I said a few posts ago about "Mammon," it should make perfect sense to you, too. I can't thank you enough for that heads up. In fact, let me thank you on behalf of everyone on this blog who might be distracted from the main target. Personally, I think we can expect many such assaults on these popular issues in the future and the voices of people like you and I are going to be sorely needed. Please, stay with us the best you can and so will I. Your input is so sorely needed. Thanks again!!!! I am so PO'd at myself for not seeing through this BS!!
Palindromedary ~ I've said it before and I'll say it again... You rock, dude. YOU ROCK!!!
So Matt, I have friends involved with Our Walmart and The Fight for Fifteen and I don't remember hearing the Black Friday protests were poorly attended.
I also participated in some of the very nascent protests at McDonalds and other fast food and low wage retail outlets myself before the movement really had a name and both there and at La Salle and Jackson with Occupy people were, by and very large, very supportive of us and identified with us, as of us, as 99 percenters. Even the police were, in both cases, extremely supportive of us - only at Occupy we squandered that when some adolescent brats, rebelling against all forms of discipline, started a positively retarded FTP (Fuck the Police) campaign. That adolescent element was a constant bane at Occupy.
France has a nice socialist democracy, protests there are commonplace. No one would ever think of banning or suppressing them. Their long bicycle races, for example, are routinely interrupted several times a day by large labor and other protests.
insite != insight
There's that P-word again...and I'm not referring to my user name. That's ok, though. In today's world, if you are not just a little bit paranoid then you haven't been paying attention. By the way, I too think that people go way overboard on being offended about some things. It is a way of bullying people that even seems to work on rich and powerful people...who have made big charitable donations to those same groups. And certain groups know that they can play it for all they can...not to mention the opportunism and exploitation by the quid nunc news services....of an old man's private conversation that was illegally procured. In a court of law, when evidence has been illegally attained, the judge is supposed to rule it inadmissible and the jurors are told to disregard it.
I think what is really, really important on the Don Sterling issue, yet is conveniently overlooked, is the breach of his privacy. No one seems to be concerned about that. And if you are not concerned about HIS privacy then you can forget about anyone caring about YOURS. His private call to his girl friend was being spied on and recorded. That's illegal, yet no one seems upset about that!
Once we're all herded down the chutes, put up by the moral minority who are spying on us, it won't be long before they are reading our minds with very sensitive electronic equipment. You know, they used to just have lie detectors that were never very reliable and are not always considered admissible in a court of law. But, they now have even better electronic means of detecting what you think about things.
Every parent should have one! ;-0 No?
I think I'll keep my tin-foil-hat-in-the-basement firmly planted on top of my head...it might just disrupt those fMRIs a bit longer. It might also help to obscure the facial recognition cameras planted all around the place.
https://www.aclu.org/blog/technology-and-liberty/high-tech-mind-readers-...
By the way, nice avatar of Niccolo (sometimes spelled Nicolo) Machiavelli! What a Prince, eh? That avatar is popular with about 40+ others according to tineye.com
In case you don't already know, DAnneMarc, ChicagoMatt's avatar is photo of a bust of Nicolo Machiavelli author of "The Prince".
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09501a.htm
ChicagoMatt ~ Well said! Nice contribution. Very nice avatar. Keep up the good work!
Thom Hartmann ~ Well said! Your best post yet! Thank you!!
Thom Hartmann is the man! So true...every word!
Or, they start caring too late. This has been going on for so long that I can't think of any information that ISN'T already out there.
Theoretically, yes. But there would have to be an army of people going through all of that information. Worrying that people are putting together a dossier on you (not you, personally, Palindromedary, but people in general), assuming you're not a drug kingpin or spy, seems a little "tin-foil-hat-in-the-basement" paranoid.
This reminds me of something I realized when I worked in retail before going into teaching. I managed a specialty chain store, and we had about 20 cameras in the place. There aren't 20 people watching those cameras. There isn't even one person watching those cameras. There was one person in a room somewhere in Tennesse who was watching all of the cameras for all of the stores West of the Mississippi. The cameras are only there to record things in case something happens, and they can go back and check out the tape.
If you really wanted to, you could use Google Sketchup to make a 3D rendering of the interior of your house and "place" it in Google Earth, so people could virtually walk through your house. Freaky.
Thanks for the shout-out!
Your worry about banks closing the accounts of different "unsavory" people is similar to my concern about Donald Sterling being banned/forced to sell his possession because of his "unsavory" views. To quote the famous poem:
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me--and there was no one left to speak for me.
Just replace the words "Socialists", "Jews", etc... with whatever you happen to be.
I agree that the practice of trying to get as much marketing data about people is pervasive. Perhaps, the next time a lowly employee badgers you for information, ask to see their supervisor and tell him/her that you don't appreciate being shaken down for personal information like that. If we all did this the merchants would fear that they would start losing customers.
But, the problem is, too many people are just not aware of what is being done, or perhaps, they just don't care. They are not thinking about the great likelihood that all of that pesky advertizing junk in their mail boxes, or the spam in their email accounts, or those pesky phone calls trying to sell you vacation time-share property or worse, was the result of being so carefree when merchants hit you up with their data collection schemes.
Google used to have a free reverse telephone number service...just type in the telephone number and it told you the name and address of the caller. They stopped that service a couple of years ago because, they claim, that too many people called them and wanted to be taken off of their data base in the name of privacy. But, I would imagine the people who complained the most were people who were running phone scams...or people who were trying to harass other people by phone but didn't like it that their victims could use Google reverse phone number service to see who was trying to harass or scam them.
You can still type in phone numbers into Google search but you always get scammer reverse phone lookup companies who want to charge you for it....and there are some claims that you don't always get much more information from these scammers than you would by doing some intelligent searches yourself.
These merchants are mining data from you that they sell to anyone who will pay them for it. Loose lips sink ships! And, all of those people who frivolously give out any kind of personal identifying information about themselves, on Twitter and Facebook, and blogs, are easy to pin down to where they live, where they work, family members, medical problems, and a lot more. The more you have said about yourself on these web sites, the more other people can find out about you. If you make it easy for them by giving your real name, or by using the same username and password on other web sites, other blogs perhaps, then you have to realize that anything you've said on any one of the web sites about yourself can be accessed by anyone who is creating a dossier of you.
If you know the address, you can use Google Earth and even Street View to virtually stand out in the street and look at the person's house. There are very dangerous people in this world who, if they get ticked off by what you say might, if they know who you are and where you live, try to do something very bad to you. Remember the crazy man in the movie "The Jerk" who picked out names from the phone book for people to shoot?
Then, there's the Government that does things like Operation Choke Point, that puts pressure on banks to close accounts of people who they believe are not morally correct...like Porn Stars. I thought that kind of thing only happened in Saudi Arabia where the religious police..the Mattawa, went around switching women's bare legs in public because their skirts were too short (like not all the way down to the ankles), or forcefully cutting off women's hair in public when they let it grow too long and let it fall naturally.
We have a government that tries to enforce a conservative morality on the people by getting banks to close customer's accounts if the customer has been found out to work as Porn Stars. What if, one day, the government decides that window washers, or wedding photographers, or field service engineers, or religious school teachers are morally reprehensible and they put pressure on the banks to close accounts of people with these kinds of jobs?
Is it any wonder the apparent chummy relations our government has with Saudi Arabia? Friendly relations with a country that is rated at the top for abusing their people....even King Abdullah's two daughters are being held as prisoners in Jeddah all because the girl's mother divorced the King and is living in London. Our own government is being controlled by moral bigots who, most likely, all watch porn movies themselves.
If the economy reacts exactly like our pay it will tank and we can press the do over button.
Thank god that isnt far off! Idiots at the top got too greedy.
We need to return to the 91% tax of the 1950's for all millionaires because those millionaires use the tax code system to make loopholes for their advantage. The 91% tax makes the tax code simple and obviates the rule: "if you can confuse, you can deceive".
Kudos to Mr. Hartmann for the best of his columns I've yet read -- nothing I could add, nothing I could criticize. Thank you!
It's on my summer reading list, believe it or not. Of course, I have a Mark Levin book on the list too, in order to try and be more multidimensional in my thinking.
She does like to argue with me a lot. :)
While I agree with you about the need for protective tariffs (I think that's what you meant at least), I think the reality of those ever coming back is nil. It's like throwing a rock at a train that's about to run you over - it may make you feel better, like you did something, but it doesn't change the outcome. The manufacturing sector isn't roaring back anytime soon, if at all.
The best thing to do, if you really want to help, is to vote with your wallet and buy American. Preferably something made at a small, American-owned factory.
chuckle8 ~ That's an amazing story. I had no idea. Nice that it was video taped. I wonder if all that video could be subpoenaed for a class action lawsuit destined for the supreme court. That case is one that just has to be heard before any serious talk of a revolution takes place. It certainly sounds like a clear violation of the constitutional right to privacy and to be free of cruel and inhumane treatment. It was definitely, unnecessary and uncalled for. It sure was nice of those clowns to video tape the evidence for We the People.
That would be cool. If I knew a company that was doing that, I would contribute to it, either through a gift or stock purchase.
I remember seeing something on cable once about a company that was actually working on a prototype space elevator. The biggest obstacle to anything space-based is just getting it up there. So they designed a cable that could run several hundred miles into the atmosphere, with a counter-weight on the other end to keep it strung tight. Then these "elevators" could attach to the cable and pull themselves into space. The trip up would take about 30 minutes, and, once constructed, would save a FORTUNE in space flight costs. Something like that would make all other space-based technology much more realistic.
I hope I live to see that day.
Aliceinwonderland ~ They haven't touched the parks here in Oakland yet. Actually we just spent the afternoon in one. They are truly a national treasure. Everyone here feels the same way. They even pick up after their dogs. It is amazing how many dogs come to our parks yet you won't find excrement anywhere. Just imagine if we patrol our parks to that extent what the good people of Oaktown would do to some fat corporations sticking their nose into those treasured sanctuaries. You think the feds have their hands full with the Bundy Brigade?