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Hillary will say/do anything to get elected and advance her personal ambitions. Don't try to "move her to the left" because with her, as with most politicians - and particularly those of her ilk - you will be only moving her rhetoric to the left. Her intentions and ambitions will remain unchanged. Her husband and Obama ran as lefties but governed as moderate Republicans. It's all flim flam with those DLC types.
Liz Banker -- I THINK LAUREN AND YOU ARE SPECULATING AT ONLY SLIGHTLY ABOVE 50%.
My best hope for Hillary is that she is also listening to Liz W. This is according to Ms Warren, not Hillary.
Liz Banker, a government by any other name smells the same. If corporations control and govern society then they are effectively the government.
"Libertarians" are not against government they are against democracy. When they complain about and try to remove government they are only seeking to remove that government that is owned by all of us. They seek to eliminate the "public goods and services" and the democratic governmental structures that serve the people, are owned by and are accountable to the people. They want government to be the personal property of some rich asshole or small clique of rich assholes.
When governmental functions are reduced to the enforcement of private property rights then those with the most property are given complete advantage and we return to feudalism. The will of the propertied then has the force of government behind it and there is nothing to stop it from becoming absolute.
The state of a nation's infrastructure is a measure of its democracy and democraticness. If the people are truly in charge then services that are important to the people are faithfully, reliably and unwaveringly performed and fulfilled. They are of a high priority. The physical infrastructure is typically first class and impeccable in such societies.
In societies where some small, corrupt clique or cabal is in charge the infrastructure is neglected,low rate, crumbling and used in money making schemes for members of that clique or cabal where they begin to extort money from the people for use of that infrastructure in the form of bribes, kickbacks, various tolls and "privatizations".
Thus the United States differs ever less from Somalia.
"Law enforcement tactics must be allowed to advance with technological changes, in order to prevent criminals from circumventing the justice system.”
Of course, our "rights" never evolve along with it. Weird how that works.
Thom's link does not work. Here is the link that lists the areas of concern.
http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/a/#p/home
The infrastructure they graded was the following. They even have a breakdown by state so one can see how their state is doing.
The infrastructure areas are:
Aviation
Bridges
Dams
Drinking water
Energy
Hazardous Waste
Inland Waterways
Levees
Ports
Public Parks and Recreation
Rail
Roads
Schools
Solid Waste
Transit
Waste Water
I am a registered civil engineer in two states, California and New Mexico. I am now retired and a life member of ASCE and am seriously disturbed by our lack of progress in updating our entire infrastructure because we are afraid to tax the rich. Meanwhile the rich have stashed trillions of dollars of OUR money overseas. This money would go a long way to repair and update our infrastructure and create JOBS.
The rest of the developed world is making us look sick. I saw a picture of a Chinese train station awhile back and there must have been a dozen high speed bullet trains in the station. I was astounded and sad that we are so damn backward.
I read yesterday that a Japanese train just broke the speed record. It is a magnetic levitation train.
We are moving backwards instead of forward spending all of our infrastructure money repairing what we have destroyed in Iraq and Afghanistan and letting the rich off from paying their fair share for the common good.
We must wake up or we will not survive the 21st century intact.
The comment by one of your posters to "end the socialism" is stupid. To be truthful, we are now officially a fascist nation. Google: "The Dangers of American Fascism, by Henry A. Wallace, 1946". Even Adolf Hitler believed in infrastructure. He built the Autobahn on which President Eisenhower modeled our federal highway system. Before WWII, he recognized the importance of a highway infrastructure. He took a military convoy across America in the 1920's and was very disappointed in the condition of our roads or the lack thereof. Commerce is the key word here. Don't you think it strange that the republicans were in charge during the 1920's and into the 1930's bringing us the Great Republican Depression of 1929. We are heading there again thanks to Saint Raygun trickle down economics. 2008 was a preview of what's to come, especially if an 'R' steals the next election. I glad that I am almost 80 and will not be here to see the collapse of America. It will make 1929 look like a picnic in the park. My parents struggled through the depression being married in 1930. My dad drilled holes in acorns for the WPA.
While of course it's the GOP most blatantly obstructing any & everything the president or the Dems have put forward, I still say both he & his party's lawmakers have seriously dropped the ball. If it weren't only Bernie Sanders & Elizabeth Warren out there on their own, but a united front by Democratic politicians from the White House to the state houses, all putting out the word, primarily about infrastructure, but also the grip corporations & the wealthy have on our nation, we might actually get people riled up, and their focus in the right direction.
Instead, they are without a voice, cat's got their tongues, spinelessness is rampant. How ANY of the GOP governors who are blocking millions of their own constituents from access to healthcare, by refusing federal money to expand Medicaid, got re-elected, is a testament to how grossly ineffective & useless most of the Democrats in office are! These governors should have been reviled as the "Death Panels" the GOP warned us we'd find, should the ACA pass!
Hell, these guys are "Death Panels of One", causing their consituents financial duress, poorer health, and in many cases, literally their lives, directly due to their partisan gamesmanship!
Yet here in Georgia, even Jimmy Carter's grandson didn't make it an issue, and across the country these heartless excuses for human beings were re-hired for another term! In Georgia, any single, working person making between $2,800 & about $13,000 a year is simply S.O.L., too much income for Medicaid, not enough for an exchange policy (which also makes zero sense, why allow this gap to exist?)...
I truly cannnot believe this can go on in America and people are not screaming from the rooftops.... we've become a nation of, you're right Thom, "SUCKERS", and distracted ones at that, unable to lift their eyes off their iPhones for anything...... SMDH.
Any Multinational company that doesn't operate in good faith in the country they've been invited into or has been found to has committed criminal offenses,besides being criminally punished , should be banned for a period of time or permanently depending on the severity of the offense.
Yes, every time I drive through Appalachia I am reminded in no uncertain terms of white privilege.
Shocking.
Edited:
We do need a BIG Government in order to fight the malfeasance (and power) of BIG Business.....
Barely a week out, presidential candidate Hillary Clinton continues to be dogged by her lack of credibility, and not being trustworthy. Again, reviewing her presidential video announcement, I would more accurately say her voice, tone, and delivery suggests that Hillary Clinton is more devoid of principle and authenticity: she really doesn’t mean what she says about Income Inequality, Hedge Managers and CEO’s, to say little to nothing of TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement), XL Pipeline, TBTF Goldman Sachs's of the world.
Lauren Steiner exposes Hillary’s and the (corporate) Democratic Party’s flawed thinking:: https://www.laprogressive.com/paul-krugman-wrong-on-hillary/ . A few highlighted arguments below:
“Next, [Paul] Krugman said any Democrat would vote to retain the tax hikes on the rich. Well, what do middle class Americans care about retaining those insufficiently low tax hikes on the rich if this trade agreement Obama is pushing, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), will outsource millions more high-paying American jobs and reduce the wages of 90% of American workers. As Secretary of State, Hillary pushed this agreement as part of the pivot to Asia, and she has refused to state an opinion about it since.""
Why should we believe that Hillary, who has been getting $200,000 speaking fees from these very same banks, $400,000 from Goldman Sachs in one six-day period alone, would put the screws to the banks? Of course, now in Iowa she is finally talking about the injustice of CEOs making 300 times what the average worker makes. But what in her past leads us to believe she would do something about this?"
"In fact, she will most probably hire the very same people, the Larry Summers, Tim Geithners and Robert Rubins of the world, whose financial deregulation caused the 2008 economic collapse in the first place. Her supporters from Big Finance are reacting with a collective “meh”. They know she has to say these things to get the support of the base. They know she won’t betray her big contributors, who are mostly big banks.”
An excellent point made in Thom's radio broadcast earlier today, 4-21-2015. We need BIG Government in order to fight the malfeasance of BIG Business: mal·fea·sance \ˌmal-ˈfē-zən(t)s\. law : illegal or dishonest activity especially by a public official or a corporation.
Unless I am wrong it was a Republican president that happened to the Cheif of Staff of the US Army that understand any future, military or peace time depended on an efficient infrastructure. It cost money, and and he wasn't affraid of "soaking the rich". The people that were paying out the better part of the taxes had no problem, most of them because it was the very infrastructure they were funding that enabled them to keep them a level of profitablity, and allowed them to expand.
Can't say what this generation of captitalists, of you want to call them that, are thinking. Once upon a time we called them Captains of Industry, now it's hard to say what they do, or how they earn their money, or perhaps the problem is that "un-earn" their money.
End road socialism.
Chi Matt -- From things you've written before, I think you are one of the few bloggers that understand the ripple effect of the economy. Empirical data has shown that welfare (social safety net) has one of the greatest ripple effects (1.68) from government spending. Conservatives increasing the safety net would mean more taxes to pay, but after paying taxes the remaining part of their check would be bigger.
I wish someone would compute the impact on our infrastructure just from the bills that the repugs filibustered in 2009. When one realizes the only reason the repugs would not vote for cloture was that it would make Obama look good, how can one measure the amount of anger in my soul. One could easily correlate the deaths by infrastructure that Thom describes to racism.
Remember Reagan deregulated the S&L's before the '84 crash and the banks were deregulated before the 2008 crash. The lesson learned in '84 has allowed virtually no convictions from 2008 to the present. Now, in 2015, the oversized banks are even larger. What was learned has resulted in absolutely no reform. Care to guess why?
Finally a yes, yes vote makes sense.
Finally a yes, yes vote makes sense.
Finally a yes, yes vote makes sense.
Both answers are right, pot never should have been made illegal.
ChicagoMatt ~ People already can't use food stamps to buy alcohol and tobacco. I can only assume if pot is legalized it would also be exempt.
Besides, if you increase revenue by legalizing pot you can easily afford to INCREASE education and social safety net spending to include addiction prevention and treatment programs--something I think both sides would agree is sorely needed. It would help prevent future drug addictions as well as effectively treat the current ones in a very effective manner.
Surely conservatives are for a little logic and compassion. Cutting the social safety net while raising revenue taxing drugs would create a huge windfall that wouldn't help anyone if not used wisely.
I think more Conservatives would be for decriminalization of pot if it went hand-in-hand with a reduction in social safety net spending. They already have a vision of people on welfare as being lazy, using the safety net as a hammock, etc... Now add in legalized pot smoking, and the Conservatives will go crazy with visions of people smoking pot on their porch, while waiting for the monthly welfare check to come in.
They'd probably say: "Smoke all the pot you want at your house. Just don't ask us to give you hand outs while you do it."
Thom is right! This madness has gone on far too long; and, we have nothing to show for it other than rampant drug use and addiction, a staggering budget deficit, the largest prison population in the history of the world, and mind-bogglingly rich international drug cartels. Nothing good has ever come of the War on Drugs; and, nothing good ever will. It's time to cut our losses and treat drug addiction as a medical condition instead of a crime. "Just Say No!" To the War on Drugs!
If our bought off politicians pass this new trade agreement, it seems to me that if enough people refused to buy these imported goods, except for only the necessities, the rest of the goods would rot on the shelves making this trade agreement worthless to the corporations. At the same time, if there were more co-ops manufacturing the goods that we want in the US, other than necessities, the power of the people would win over the greedy corporations. What we need is enough people saying the solgan "DONT BUY IT"