Once more into the breach…...

Lafayette, September 27 at 10:31 am Link to this comment

  ardee:: Your mantra of “its just too difficult” frankly makes me nauseous.

With all due respect, it is beyond comprehension how you’ve read that in my comment. I am a political activist with very little passivity.

I quite understand that your own words are beyond your comprehension, thus I will cite them here ,again:

Get elected to LaLaLand on the Potomac and you will see for yourself. Don’t be surprised, as an elected Democrat, all the pathetic whining on the blogoshphere because you don’t know how to walk-on-water.

Complaining is dead easy, doing is difficult.

This is the very stuff of nausea as it plainly states that a sixty vote majority in
the Senate could accomplish not one iota of difference, of reform, could not end torture, war, rendition, the loss of jobs and homes and futures.

What it could accomplish was giving a free pass to criminals, as well as giving them billions of our childrens dollars, as , I suppose, a reward for their clever theft of our economy and our pensions. It also continued assassinating women and children and perhaps even a terrorist or two in the process. The Democratic Govt. of these last two years is an unfunny joke…and you write it off because it is sooo hard.

You have every right to whine in a blog. I have every right to say that politics is the art of the possible.

Yup you surely can, and I can hold your “possible” up to the scrutiny of “not damn likely”.

If the Dems did not do better it is quite likely that they were playing against a stacked deck, was it not? With the BlueDogs in the House and the Super-majority Rule in the Senate, just what were we to expect of the Dems? No political party walks-on-water-in-Washington with those two factors militating against it.

Again, Bush accomplished the near destruction of our democracy with at best 53 Senators.Obama can’t cross the damn street with a greater majority. You note that the blue dogs kill all hope, I note they are members of the Democratic Party, are they not?

Thus, in the absence of a reform movement within your party, and I see no such thing nor hint even of such a thing, with the wedding of Democrats to Corporate money a thriving union, I reject your “just sooo hard” excuse and condemn that party as a fools hope and seek my nation’s salvation elsewhere. After all it is my right as it is yours to continue to sit on the deck of the Titanic and insist icebergs are a myth.

Yeah, I guess stepping in bullshit is easy, avoiding it is difficult,
especially if you think the entire world is just a barn full of shitting
bulls.

I still think, ardee’s quote is better.

Shenonymous, September 28 at 12:59 pm

“Complaining is dead easy, doing is difficult.”  That is a very
intuitive statement.

  I prefer the statements as spoken by two cowboys in a “spaghetti” Western to
wit:  ” the difference between the talking and the doing is as big as the distance
between the earth and the heavens” and quickly followed by, “bullshit keeps the
world going around”.

    One of the founders of the US Federal Reserve a German Banker by the name
of Paul Warburg who worked for Kuhn and Loeb on Wall Street made the
following comment in 1914 dats 1914 before the U.S. Senate:- WE SHALL HAVE
WORLD GOVERNMENT WHETHER OR NOT WE LIKE IT. THE ONLY QUESTION IS
WHETHER WORLD GOVERNMENT WILL BE ACHIEVED BY CONQUEST OR
CONSENT”

    At the present the US still maintains a military presence in several
countries. The number of US military installations around the world numbers in
the hundreds. The US has been invoved in wars for the past 50 years at least.

    During that time several elections have been held and the so called two
parties have alternated in holding the top spot and majorities in both houses.
And the most notable actions taken is that Alan Greenspan was made a SIR by
the Queen of England. And the US is not only spending millions everyday of the
year in foreign countries but has close to 36 million unemployed.

    Have those two italian cowboys been out herding bulls too long? AND WHATS WITH ALAN GREENSPAN AND THE QUEEN OF ENGLAND?

What is the point in hating any political leader?  Republican or
Democrat.  They are elected by the public, it is just that the public
keeps making the same mistake over and over.  It is a pathology
because of ignorance.  If a kid tries to tie his/her shoes and don’t
know how to intertwine and loop the two ends, he/she is
unsuccessful and all that is left are loose ends.  It is up to those
who know better to enlighten the ignorant, but in ways they can
understand and assimilate the knowledge.  An overestimation of how
well people, ignorant people, can internalize truth about reality or the
reality about truth (even if they are synonymous) is more often than
not, not understood by those who do know better.

“Complaining is dead easy, doing is difficult.”  That is a very
intuitive statement.

As a democracy, collectivism was built into our society at its birth.  So
collective action has always been here.  But “rugged” individualism was
extolled as virtuous so much by historians and sociologists, I don’t
think with any sinister intentions, but as a way to describe the
phenomenon that is America, a unique nation among all nations in the
world.  It is a place that more or less created itself and becomes the
model, just a Plato created his Republic as a model for how a man
ought to conduct his life, America’s spirit in the hands of those who
would publicly describe it, has become like the comic book hero, a
hero to the world.  Heroism is a huge part of America’s charisma, it
personifies backbone and grit, mettle and resolve to succeed.  America
has a magnetism because of how its individuals get together to make
things work.  There will always be adversities both natural and
manmade, and those who would take massive advantage of both
individuals and the masses and we have clear examples of that, where
the shuysters sell encyclopedias to those who cannot afford them, and
ideologues such as communist organizers and central committees who
would exploit huge numbers of people as a government system. 
Capitalists do that on the financial model.  So what we have to do is to
become conscious and rational at the same time.  Falling for
conspiracies puts us into a fantasy mode and clouds the right path
towards real freedom.  And equally important, we still have our morals
to contend with so those are what needs to be as clearly defined as
ever before.  How shall a set of morals be assembled when there are so
many disparate social groups that make up America?

It is blatantly obvious that most of the Democratic Party politicians do
need criticized soundly and loudly.  It is almost unfathomable what the
hell they are doing.  They are spineless jellyfish self-serving politicians. 
Only two I can see have enough steel in their backs to buck the entire
cadre in Washington, and they would be Anthony Weiner of New York
and Alan Grayson, Florida and socialist Bernie Sanders.  Local voters
need to get their asses in gear and elect Democrats who will in fact
represent them.  There ought to be a way for the local voters to get rid
of politicians elected who do not carry out for what the people voted
them into office.  Senators serve for 6 years, while Representatives
serve two years.  Every district party leaders need to keep track and
they are responsible for reporting, regularly, to the constituency how
well their elected politicians do.  But six years for a senator who does
not represent the will of the people without the people’s recourse is
unconscionable.

One Paragraph of Lafayette comment which caught me eye!

“Individualism maintains that what is good for each and every one of us is good for the whole. Collectivism espouses the notion that what is good for the whole is best for each of us individually. Both are right, both are wrong. Meaning, it depends “

Lafayette’s post a very sensible premise and most enlightening prospect providing food for thought!

TO OMOP

Many in this thread are indulging themselves in Conspiracy Theory, by which everything that affects us is beyond our control because our personal real power is infinitely small compared to the power accumulated in state or national capitals. These notions have a currency that avoids the usage of time and they are almost entirely false in functional democracies.

Our power is infinitely small - we are only one at the ballot box. But together, it is the voting constituency that runs this nation. We do not realize this fact sufficiently well. Why?

We come to the heart of the matter, which is the modern day struggle between Individualism and Collectivism. Socioeconomic scientists categorize broadly countries into either of these two classes … or on a range between the two extremes (since the words are mutually antonymous).

I have lived in both types of society. The US is almost without doubt an Individualist society, where freedom is interpreted in a highly singular manner and relates entirely to the individual person. European nations evolved differently, they were almost always collective societies, so their interpretation of freedom (now that they have shed their institutional monarchies) related to that of the collective or sum of individuals that constitute the nation.

Individualism maintains that what is good for each and every one of us is good for the whole. Collectivism espouses the notion that what is good for the whole is best for each of us individually. Both are right, both are wrong. Meaning, it depends …

No doubt, our freedoms should allow individuals to fulfill themselves without constraint. But the flip side of individualist freedom is individual responsibilities. These latter are both civic and moral. We have a responsibility to defend the nation, a responsibility to pay taxes to run the nation and a civic duty to elect our representatives to Congress and the White House. We have also, however, a responsibility to one another.

Sociologically humans have grouped together always. We are therefore intrinsically collective animals. We group together by necessity and by a law of economics. That law is called the Division of Labor, which means that each person working to focus on producing only some items and then exchanging those items (that others need) for those that we need produced by others – that we are all better off for the transaction.

So we cannot avoid the fact that as consumers we also need markets where we exchange the produce of our labor for that of others. Simply put, we cannot live without one another. We are, intrinsically, collective animals – but of a higher intellect.

My point: The collective (community, village, city, state, and nation) determines what is best for each of us, not the reverse. When the reverse happens, that is, the collective (aka Congress or President) decides in an immoral manner to assure that some individuals are more privileged, for whatever the reason, than others, then that process is not only immoral but illegal. And yet, this nation of plutocrats is the product of the simple fact that the accumulation of wealth was decided and implemented not only by Congress but by both parties therein.

This error, which has brought about such profound inequality within the collective (the nation), should be reversed. We should get back to highly progressive taxation such that the nation can, by taxing and spending, obtain a more level playing field.

The above in no way means we should do away with millionaires. We have all different talents and fortune, so the individual must be motivated to fulfill him or herself.  But they need not be allowed the right to accumulate an unfair share of the riches of this nation, which are generated by collective effort. Because such is immoral in a nation where its consequence are the incarceration in poverty of far too many of our fellow citizens. Which is tantamount to Darwinian socioeconomic outcomes.

QED

In response to:

              Lafayette, September 27 at 1:40 pm.

QUOTING:

          President James Garfield, ” Whoever controls the volume of money in
any country is master of all its legislation and commerce”.

          Baron M. A. Rothschild **, “Give me control over a nation’s currency and I
care not who makes its kaws”.

          Felix Frankfurter. U.S. Supreme Court Justice, ” The real rulers in
Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes”.

          President Woodrow Wilson, ” There is a power somewhere so
organized, so subtle, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive that they better
not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it”.

          Winston Churchill, ” The further backward YOU can look, the further
forward YOU can see”.

    ** One of the founders of the US Federal Reserve Bank.

Here’s a reminder for those that will say the lesser of evils is less evil. This list has been carried out by the President and the party that controls both houses of Congress:

-aggressively opposed impeachment action against Bush

-Had argued that conservatives and Bill Clinton were right to destroy social welfare,

-Supported making it harder to file class action suits in state courts

-Voted for a business-friendly “tort reform” bill

-Voted against a 30% interest rate cap on credit cards

-Had the most number of foreign lobbyist contributors in the primaries

-Was even more popular with Pentagon contractors than McCain

-Was the most popular of the candidates with K Street lobbyists

-Was named in 2003 by the rightwing Democratic Leadership Council as one of its “100 to Watch.” After he was criticized in the black media, Obama disassociated himself with the DLC. But his major economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, was still the chief economist of the conservative organization.

-Supported the war on drugs

-Supported Real ID

-Supported the PATRIOT Act

-Supported the death penalty

-Opposed lowering the drinking age to 18

-Went to Connecticut to support Joe Lieberman in the primary against Ned Lamont

-Lent his support, as Paul Street of Z Mag noted, ” to the aptly named Hamilton Project, formed by corporate-neoliberal Citigroup chair Robert Rubin and other Wall Street Democrats to counter populist rebellion against corporatist tendencies within the Democratic Party. . . Obama was recently hailed as a Hamiltonian believer in limited government and free trade by Republican New York Times columnist David Brooks.”

-Endorsed US involvement in the failed drug war in Colombia.

-Voted for a nuclear energy bill that included money for bunker buster bombs and full funding for Yucca Mountain.

-Came in at 48th in the ranking of senators by the League of Conservation Voters

-Supported federally funded ethanol and was unusually close to the ethanol industry.

-Promised to double funding for private charter schools, part of a national effort to undermine public education.

-Supported the No Child Left Behind Act

-Favored expanding the war in Afghanistan

- Supported Israeli aggression and apartheid.

- Favored turning over Jerusalem to Israel

- Wouldn’t rule out first strike nuclear attack on Iran

- Called Pakistan “the right battlefield ... in the war on terrorism.” Threatened to invade Pakistan

- Opposed gay marriage

- Opposed single payer healthcare

- Supported restricting damage awards in medical malpractice suits

- Favored healthcare individual mandates that would help insurance companies and banks but not
citizens

- Wanted to expand the size of the military.

- Wouldn’t have photo taken with San Francisco mayor because he was afraid it would seem that he
supported gay marriage

- Dissed Ralph Nader for daring to run for president again

- Called the late Paul Wellstone “something of a gadfly”

- Was ranked 24th in the Senate by Progressive Punch

- Said “everything is on the table” with Social Security.

No wonder the Democrats keep talking about Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin.

A MORE JUST SOCIETY

Does it really, really matter whether its this party or that party or the Tea Party that inhabits DC?

Yes, it does matter. We must not make the amalgam that all parties are evil, regardless of their platforms. To do so is simplistic nonsense and a slippery slope to hell.

Let’s remember that in a democracy, our political class is simply a reflection of the constituency that elected the politicians. What matter is what we believe and therefore want.

If Americans have not understood that we should stay out of Wars – we’ve been in so many – then they deserve the consequence of that idiocy. Remember that Ike warned us about the M-I-C and who better than an ex-general of the army should know?

The M-I-C was firmly established by WW2 and we never disestablished it. There is no doubt that we thought we should win the Vietnam War - just like the Korean War sometime before. And the M-I-C was there to do it.

The DOD budget is corporate welfare of the most evident kind. What is that we want, Guns or Butter?

And parties also have philosophies. Reagan was the harbinger of Conservative thought that BigGovernment was evil. But the wool he was pulling over our eyes was the reduction of marginal taxation, the reason why conservatives had funded not only his campaign but that of every Republican president since. So, parties do matter.

If no one specifically mentions Income Inequality it is because, first, the media is not particularly of an economic mind. I suspect most reporters haven’t the foggiest notion of what it is, so why should they write about it. Beyond the media, and secondly, are the politicians who do not care to touch the subject with a ten-foot pole. Why? Because it can’t help them get elected.

The American body politic is wedded to the notion that individuals are free to earn one whole helluva lotta money. Freedom is “the sky’s the limit” - which is not the whole truth given the evidence of the recent past. When unbridled capitalism brings us to the brink of self-destruction by means of Wall Street greed, then that notion must be questioned.

We are a collective society. Does anybody know a millionaire who made him or herself rich on a deserted island? It can’t be done. You need a communal grouping or collective of people to create a Free Market. If that is true, then there is room for the notion that wildly exaggerated Income Inequality – brought about by a diminished marginal taxation of high incomes—has no place in our socioeconomic system. Because, we have seen, it can easily become a menace to the general public.

Which is a fundamental philosophy of Social Democrat governments in Europe.

Tax & Spend is nothing new to the Democrat Party – which has forgot its roots. We know where to tax, but where to spend seems to be an issue. Most people, by now one would hope, will understand that a proper Health Care system that leaves no one behind in the misery of a serious or incurable illness is the hallmark of an advanced society. Europeans have had just such National Health Systems for almost half a century.

Assuring our ability to advance the nation’s economic vibrancy by means of good, solid education of our youth is another evident truth. But how do we accomplish that feat with only 12% of your youth going on to a post-secondary schooling? 

Obama, despite all the present wailing and whining, remains the president most able to bring about A More Just Society in America. And, if not him, don’t count on a Republican controlled House or Chamber to do so.

The midterms elections are America’s Reckoning Day.

The Dems are great punters, they have a way of punting to the party of no!

The dems. are punting until after the November elections because they don’t want anymore bad press of their voting record on it on those who are having a hard time in the polls of getting reelected.

It’s not ALL the repubs. fault.

FF: Compare that to interest rates. Prime, Fed Funds, and Treasuries rate. At quick glance, there seems to be a correlation, possibly a causality?

Causality usually has more determinacy, meaning a more evident link.

The fact the income inequality has lessened (the higher the coefficient, the higher the income inequality) is purely a matter of tax policy, since the two variables are only net revenue and population.

Fix the tax policy, by increasing taxes on the upper echelons of earnings and the Gini Coefficient will lessen.

Lafayette

Interesting chart. Compare that to interest rates. Prime, Fed Funds, and Treasuries rate. At quick glance, there seems to be a correlation, possibly a causality?

Using Joe Friday’s dicta of .“just the facts Ma’am”. US experts conclusions on
the costs of the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan [first promoted by
Netanyahu’s group under Richard Perle, Feith, Bolton, Rumsfeld and other
neocons with the title “A clean Break to save Israel, etc,.” ARE:

      TOTAL COSTS FOR IRAQ $ 790 BILLION US DOLLARS.
      TOTAL COSTS FOR AFGHANISTAN $ 270 BILLION US DOLLARS.

      DAILY COSTS IRAQ. $290 MILLION
      DAILY COSTS AFGHANISTAN $80 MILLION.

      Wars started by GWB and continuing under Obama. Enough blame to go
around. Does it really, really matter whether its this party or that party or the
Tea Party that inhabits DC?

ardee:: Your mantra of “its just too difficult” frankly makes me nauseous.

With all due respect, it is beyond comprehension how you’ve read that in my comment. I am a political activist with very little passivity.

You have every right to whine in a blog. I have every right to say that politics is the art of the possible.

If the Dems did not do better it is quite likely that they were playing against a stacked deck, was it not? With the BlueDogs in the House and the Super-majority Rule in the Senate, just what were we to expect of the Dems? No political party walks-on-water-in-Washington with those two factors militating against it.

Just because Dems have a majority in both houses is evidently not enough to permit democratic, majority-rule. So, if that is the problem, then let’s fix it.

Why not ask the American people to decide, by means of a national referendum, whether the Senate has the right to a Super-majority rule? They adopted that rule in conference and it has no constitutional standing whatsoever.

The super-majority rule is not democracy. It is denial of democracy. Should we vote for Senators who approve that rule?

Rather than blaming the political amalgam called the Democratic Party, let’s try fixing the political system. Meaning this:
* Get the BlueDogs to run under a conservative Republican Flag, where they belong.
* Do away with the super-majority rule, and
* Forbid all campaign funding that does not come from citizens (which, even then, is limited) and not corporations— which have no right to vote and therefore no right whatsoever to promote a political agenda.

Our democratic system has serious faults and before we blame the Dems for everything under the sun that goes wrong in America, let’s fix what needs fixing.

By national referendum, I say. If the Americans want a super-majority in the Senate, they’ll vote for it and be obliged to accept the gridlock that goes with it. If Americans do not want a Public Option Health Care, let them vote it down in a national referendum and assume the consequences of extremely hi-cost Health Care. If they want campaign funding unconstrained to corporations/individuals, then let them accept that BigBusiness and plutocrats will continue to manipulate Congress towards its own ends.

The Swiss have been using national referendums for over one hundred and fifty years—and they have what many consider the most functional democracy on earth.

“PUNISH REPUBLICANS. Vote Democratic. That’s how you’ll get what you want.”

Yeah, like the last election for example? How did that work out for you? How many elected democrats does it take, anyway? Forty, fifty, a hundred,tell me I’m just absolutely dying to know.

Lafayette, September 27 at 1:54 am Link to this comment

  ardee: The Democrats forget that they serves the best interests of the people of this nation

Enough of this simplistic nonsense. Politics is the art of the possible.

a typical democratic loyalist bemoaning the impossibility of stopping our slide into fascism. Why was it that Bush could enact his entire agenda, sans SS reform of course, with only 53 Senators seated? Why is it that Obama runs in circles like a headless chicken with ,at one point, 60 Senators on his side?

Get elected to LaLaLand on the Potomac and you will see for yourself. Don’t be surprised, as an elected Democrat, all the pathetic whining on the blogoshphere because you don’t know how to walk-on-water.

Complaining is dead easy, doing is difficult.

This really says absolutely nothing except “learn your fate and resign yourself to it”. Your mantra of “its just too difficult” frankly makes me nauseous. As does your assumption that I am not actively involved in local political action, and have been for decades.

You, of course, are free to continue to whine.

Wow, are you all REALLY going to do it again?

The goose-stepping Republicans block a middle class tax cut, and you’re going to take it out on Democrats?

UN-be-lievable.

Or, alternately, Republicans force everybody to get a tax cut, the budget goes in the dumper, and THEN you blame Democrats?

What in God’s name are you all thinking???

PUNISH REPUBLICANS. Vote Democratic. That’s how you’ll get what you want.

glider, September 26 at 5:01 pm Link to this comment

Absolutely pathetic!  Succumbing to their usual spineless and corporatist sellout behavior is more like it!  Take the damn vote and give us citizens some direct feedback on who are the sleazeballs holding this up!
*************************

Though a registered Democrat, this is why I HATE the party leaders.  This is PRECISELY the worst thing they can do.  Since the Re-thugs promised they would “veto” any tax cut that didn’t include the richest Americans, the Dems could FORCE THEM to vote to raise taxes—DIRECTLY VIOLATING THEIR BRAND-NEW “PLEDGE”!

Pelosi and Reid have engaged consistently in this kind of stupidity since they became the leaders in January of 2007—and they haven’t learned a DAMN THING in that time!

All they had to do was let the Bush tax cuts expire in December, but oh no, lets
obfuscate the whole damn issue and then dollars to donuts Obama will pull one of
his back stabbing compromises with the Repugs and what for? Probably to pass a
military budget. Up yours Barry.

GIFTING

This is an appropriate moment to show the history of Uncle Sam"s Gini Coefficient of Income Inequality since the Great Depression (from WikiPedia):

Gini indices for the United States at various times, according to the US Census Bureau:

  * 1929: 45.0 (estimated)
  * 1947: 37.6 (estimated)
  * 1967: 39.7 (first year reported)
  * 1968: 38.6 (lowest index reported)
  * 1970: 39.4
  * 1980: 40.3
  * 1990: 42.8
  * 2000: 46.2
  * 2005: 46.9
  * 2006: 47.0 (highest index reported)
  * 2007: 46.3
  * 2008: 46.69

Throughout the period of Bush the Son’s administration, the coefficient maintained itself at a six-point higher level than when Reckless Ronnie took office and reduced marginal tax rates disastrously from 70% to about 27%. The coefficient of Income Inequality rose inexorably thereafter to its present historically high level today.

Is this just in an America based not necessarily on income equality (the communists proved that as economic policy such idiocy cannot work), but upon income fairness?

Does it surprise anyone that the Reps want to maintain what the American tax system gifts to its plutocrats.

POST SCRIPTUM

And for another reminder of the facts of Income Inequality, American-style, go here.

If you were born with one ... the analyses are enough to surprise the silver spoon right out of your mouth.

ardee: The Democrats forget that they serves the best interests of the people of this nation

Enough of this simplistic nonsense. Politics is the art of the possible.

Get elected to LaLaLand on the Potomac and you will see for yourself. Don’t be surprised, as an elected Democrat, all the pathetic whining on the blogoshphere because you don’t know how to walk-on-water.

Complaining is dead easy, doing is difficult.

The Democrats forget that they serves the best interests of the people of this nation, not the whims and politicking of the GOP or the desires of the wealthy to hold onto what they have stolen. If the Democrats are so convinced that this tax revision is in the best interests of the people then go forward with both a vote on the bill and explain why it is indeed the correct course of action.

But the propaganda of the extremists on the right, unchallenged by spineless and pandering Democrats, incorrectly states that a tiny rise in the taxes of a few billionaires is going to cost us jobs. Anyone with a modicum of brain cells who thinks that job creation hinges upon a couple of hundred thousand dollars here or there is failing to use those brain cells.

The fact of the matter is that those selfish and avaricious unAmerican inheritors of great wealth ( mostly) will not even miss that additional few bucks in taxes, and it certainly will not alter their life styles or business decisions one iota.

Democrats are letting you and I down while wrapping themselves in the self pity of Republican recalcitrance. Democrats have become a joke, a not very funny joke at that. While the GOP managed quite nicely to pass every damn Bush agenda item but one, Social Security remains so far inviolate, having only ,at best, 53 Senators while our current crop of cowardly democrats have had upwards of 60 members of the Senate and cannot seem to do squat. Perhaps it is because they cater, more quietly, to the same masters that rule the GOP.

“succumbing to the fact that they do not have enough GOP support to push forward a bill without accompanying tax cuts to the wealthy”

Absolutely pathetic!  Succumbing to their usual spineless and corporatist sellout behavior is more like it!  Take the damn vote and give us citizens some direct feedback on who are the sleazeballs holding this up!