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I don't understand what the Democrat party is doing at all. Time and time again, it is the President, alone, that expresses the accomplishments of his office only to not hear a peep from the party. It is as if the Democrat party is completely seperated and removed from the President. We have seen this in the last election cycle as well.
KCRuger -- Thanks for adding clarity to the conversation. I think the metrics for determining economic expansion should be those used by the Federal Reserve. The Fed uses the unemployment rate and the CPI. I have heard Thom say the economy needs help if the unemployment rate is greater than 3.8%. Robert Reich, like I said earlier, thinks the economy needs some help if the CPI is less than 4%.
That being said, I do not think our government should stop investing in the strength of our country even if we are expanding. I would like for us to be sure we have the proper sensors for Amtrak to prevent what happened in the Northeast Corridor. They said that was costing our economy a $100 million per day. I think we should be sure the IRS should be sufficiently funded. Without proper funding, the only people paying their fair of taxes are those who cannot afford a CPA/Tax Attorney. I have heard Thom say that investment in the IRS has a 6 to 1 return. Of course, I want to make sure every student with the ability is not denied an education, expanding economy or not.
Just a quick comment off subject. Great show Thom ! Watch every night at 10 in Vermont !
The less coverage by the main media of Bernie Sanders is strategic to keep the public ignorant and turn debates into name calling instead of the real issues of inequality, oligarchical corporate control of our government, to incarcerate, segregate, instill fear, make war, sacrifice social security, equity and rights to choose for women, our very livelihoods, as well as our environment for the sake of disproportionate profits and greed for those in Power. The ruling on citizens united opened the floodgates of money for corporate media moguls. Yet Senator Sanders vows overturning citizens united turning off that well spring.
I don't see any need to rush into it. The Republicans are just going to spin old stale ideas trying to make them sound fresh. How long have we been hearing? Repeal Obama care. Defund Planned Parenthood. Save Social Security. Privatize Medicare. Voter ID. Smaller government. Privatize everything. Cut-cut cut. Gets old. Let it get even older. Maybe then the Democratic debates in the fall will be like a breath of fresh air.
Thanks for your input. I think anecdotes are the strongest weapon we have to inform the people who are overloaded with the responsibilities of life. It takes bribery to be covered - Wow!
One guy called a local program on our progressive radio station last week. He said he ran for a U.S. House seat before in a downstate Illinois district.
He was a progressive reform candidate and refused money from corporations and I don't know who else. He then didn't have a lot of money and didn't buy many - if any - ads.
He said that, at events and debates and such, as soon as he got up to speak all the cameras and news microphones would be turned off and nothing he said or did would ever appear in print or on broadcast media.
He said that later on in the campaign some executives from local newspapers and radio and TV stations told him that if he wanted them to give him any coverage he had to buy ads on their broadcast stations and in their newspapers. There's also a privatized bribery, palm greasing and quid pro quo that is an accepted, endemic part of the system.
In Europe, in the '70s, when I was there, all TV and radio was publicly - government - owned and democratically controlled by the people. In West Germany a couple of hours a day were set aside for advertising and commercials didn't interrupt programing.
It was all public broadcasting. The programing was of an immensely higher quality - a PBS kind of level, they weren't of nearly such a consumer society as we and, together with their public funded election campaigns, there were worlds more integrity in their politics.
Socialism indeed, we know who doesn't want it and why.
The gross-out tactic of the anti-abortionists is so stupid. As a child, I fainted from watching open-heart surgery on TV. I would never use that as an excuse for making surgery illegal, even if I felt that way.
@Chuckle8: You know the answer; austerity refers to cuts made in a time lacking economic expansion. During times of economic expansion, deficits not only should be cut, they should not exist. It is debatable if this is such a time, of course. Given wages being stagnant for everybody except the top few%, I would argue no.
Why doesn't Jill Stein run for any other office? In fact, why doesn't she move to Vermont and run to replace Bernie if he becomes President?
I live in a swing state (Colorado), so I don't know if everyone is seeing this, but there have been ads recently that are essentially for the Republican Party, but done by a group called Opportunity Lives (http://www.opportunitylives.com/). As with any ad for a product that's been in the news, this is spin control.
The ads explicitly try to convince people to be Republicans, but the truly ridiculous part is when they talk about leaving people alone, not letting government tell them how to live. On the TV ad, this plays over a scene of a shop turning on an "open" sign, clearly referring to, but contradicting, the religious "freedom" law of Indiana. Republicans want to insert their religion into government and that religion is all about telling people how to live.
Further verification that the privately owned Main Stream Media in this country has become the Government's unofficial ministry of propaganda that are given unlimited free access to Tax Payer owned bandwidth, or has that also been privitized without our knowledge ?
Bernie is my hero! I stopped watching Matthews months ago. I used to get a kick out of him, but his rudeness to his guests began to grate on my nerves. Back during the Clinton years, he was a big Clinton basher. Why the sudden love for Hillary? Is this who MSNBC has chosen as our next president? Is he just the water-carrier for MSNBC? Its all a big corporate media distraction! And, by the way, is (or was) Joe Biden running before all of the oxygen got sucked out of the room by the likes of Matthews?
[[A rhyme that some of the Rightists
might actually Believe their nonsense]]:
The ID’S BIDS for POWER
. . . .
Repeat your lies often and loud,
so’s your audience’s minds to becloud, -
- and even your Own mind too
might come the facts to eschew
so that lie upon lie might accrue
inside your very Self {in your Id}
as for political power you bid.
============
Red Meat Sizzles
. . . .
His red meat sizzles;
from his mouth it drizzles.
A Rightists’ brain fizzles.
It’s nonsense he chisels
away from the blocks of facts, - it’s
his basic style of tac-tics.
=======================
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Ou812 -- Thank you for the response, finally. I keep trying to make it easier for someone to criticize me and still no one does.
As far as sources are concerned, I thought everyone could look at the DOW. The Ravi Batra reference would be a discussion with Thom for which DAnneMarc provided me a link to the transcript. The wealth of Japan was in an article from a Santa Cruz University. I was given the article by a right winger who didn''t realize some its contents. I am trying to find it now. The fact that the debt that matters is the ratio of debt/GDP can be provided by any economist on the planet earth. If I was being funded by a billionaire, I would spend the time to make these links better.
Does anyone know the difference between austerity and reducing the deficit? Thom seems to like that Obama is reducing the deficit, but he has pointed out that austerity never works.
The unregulated capitalist is a person who knowingly destroys our planet because 52 billion in net worth isn't enough. The Democratic Socialist fights for things like green energy, and cradle to grave health care for all. Rich people demonized the word Socialist...it's time we the 99% demonize the word capitalism.
Socialist is a positive word that stands for social and economic justice...I'm a very proud Socialist!...and always will be.
I've seen Wasserman Schultz debate right wingers....there's absolutely zero fight in her....she's a career politician. I'm being polite.
What a coincidence, Jay. I have the same combination on my luggage.
Chris Mathews has greatly disapointed me with a few things he's said. I've seen him anti war one day and pro war in the same week. When i saw him trash Bernie, he bacame dead to me. Shame on him and his influences.
Jay12345 -- What?
Socialism and democracy are the same. Socialism is a more genuine democracy than a "bourgeois democracy", democracy that ignores or glosses over the power imbalances between rich and poor.
Socialism is far too nuanced and complicated a subject for this sound bite, bumper sticker, short concentration span society. Most people here know just enough about socialism " to be dangerous", as it were.
Any socialism has its origin in democratic intent. The authoritarian Marxism's, the different Leninisms of Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tze Tung, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Mihn, Kim Jong Il, etc. were revisionist Marxsims that diverged pretty widely from Marx's thinking in its scientific basis and thus its political economic philosophy.
Marx believed that a society had to be industrialised to be able to effect socialism. Socialist revolution was for the informed, urban proletariat not the dark, superstitious agrarian peasant. Thus society had to first go through a phase of capitalism and bourgeois democracy - resulting from its nascent industrialization which overthrew the feudal order.
Lenin and all the Leninists following him ignored this and tried to effect top down socialism by force, trying to artificially install something that must evolve naturally.
I never took "Motor Mouth" very seriously.
Regarding mainstream news reporters like Chris Matthews, the Gandhi thing works in reverse. First-he won a show on network TV, second-they fought to get rid of him and shipped him down to cable, third-they laughed at him "tingle up and down my leg", fourth-now it's time to ignore him.
Want to see a Canary Census Budget alternative of all caucuses forcing demos to review majority minority report to read at the plank of convention speeches respondents to numbers backing up overlays on prepared positions to Canary data horserace assessment in impact on recognition of base priorities and how leadership plans to draw off supports into leadership.