CLAPTRAP

RL: Ir doesn’t matter - the driver of the political process is the monied class which is why the status quo is maintained regardless of who is in the Whitehouse. The Big Corporations even control our food which is why obesity is the number one health problem in America.

The above is Delusional Conspiracy Theory, just like so much other crap we get on this public forum. (They dump chemicals in our water supply as well. Why not go the whole ten yards—they run the government, right?)

If you want to make accusations, you’d better be able to prove them. Like in a court of law.

You haven’t a shred of evidence that, by means of colluding with elected government representatives, they “run government”. You are misconstruing collusion and bribery with dictatorship. They do not run the Federal government, they influence it. Buying influence is the problem and always has been the problem in Washington.

We, the People, elect our representatives. So to correct the problem of collusive bribery, we need to change the rules by which anyone contributes to public elections and the manner in which elected and nominated officials accept anything of value (whether monetary, or of a service nature, or outright gift).

It would also help if they were forbidden to leave government and work for any person or organization that has dealings with their previous responsibilities (aka “the revolving door” in LaLaLand on the Potomac) for at least five years - under pain of penal prosecution.

We, the People, can solve this problem had we the will to do so. But, in fact, we prefer to bitch-in-a-blog and blame our misfortunes upon Conspiracy Theory from on high.

Claptrap, pure claptrap.

When we review the previous four “personages” who
occupied the White House.  When we consider how the
present occupant has accelerated the CIA
Disinformation Program.  When we consider that he
shifted “Wall Street” into Grandma gear.  When we
consider that he has amplified the mechanisms that
declare Americans who dissent with USGov policy as
“Homeland Terrorists.”

The direction is constant, the speed has accelerated. 
Is one speech a narrative?  For me it is a manifest
continuation of disinformation that naive´ folk
wanted to hear, that too many Americans continue to
believe in their naive stupidity.

I forgot to mention the most important fact.
Obama is full of sh*t

Lafayette
“No, I reject outright your simplist conjecture that intimates that the American Plutocracy (which includes more than just corporate management) has some sort of strangle-hold on the political class.”
Then you are in illusion, in a fit of wishful thinking. That knowledge is common to the best political thinkers such as Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky. Whether you think plutocracy (your word, not mine) includes more than corporations ia a semantic quibble. Let’s call it the military-indulstrial complex. Ir doesn’t matter - the driver of the political process is the monied class which is why the status quo is maintained regardless of who is in the Whitehouse. The Big Corporations even control our food which is why obesity is the number one health problem in America. You can count the number of corporations that produce everything you see in the supermarket on the fingers of one hand.
Nothing could be more self-aggrandizing than exceptionalism. The idea that somehow a nation is above law and ethics and everything it does is anointed by God including its acts of aggression. is a dangerous form of blindness. It has allowed the American people to be duped into a near economic collapse.

ELECTORAL MANIPULATION

RL: The corporatocracy is not a phantom just because income inequality extends to the 19th century.

No, I reject outright your simplist conjecture that intimates that the American Plutocracy (which includes more than just corporate management) has some sort of strangle-hold on the political class.

This search of the “smoking gun”, the blameworthy element, is nonsense—particularly in our democracy.

We, the People, have the right to elect whom we chose to office as our representatives. If we allow ourselves to be manipulated by the palaver that the plutocracy pays to have its Media Minions shovel our way, then we deserve the political class we obtain.

I never tire at arguing that the American electorate is fat, dumb and happy. Particularly the dumb component. They are, for the most part, politically naive in a country with a political divide that is 50/50. Which means that only 3/4/5% of the electorate need be swayed one way of the other to capture both local and national elective-office seats.

And far too often the means for doing so are highly subject—defamation, slander and character assassination pass for cogent political debate.

JUST THE FACTS, MA’AM

Look, in a country where 40% of the people refuse to believe the archaeological facts that prove our evolution and prefer to believe the earth was “created”, abracadabra, by a Supreme Being 10,000 years ago—then one can imagine what sort of political garbage they are apt to gobble hook, line and sinker.

Don’t believe the above fact? See these results from a recent Gallup Poll.

If people are too stupid to seek the facts and deliberate them in an intelligent manner, then they are inviting manipulation. Which is what they get.

And what they get, in the way of a Political Class, is what they deserve.

Lafayette
“We have had a recession recently and many want to blame a plutocracy”
Now everyone wants to blame the deficit - far more simplistic, which confuses effect with cause,symptom with disease.
The corporatocracy is not a phantom just because income inequality extends to the 19th century. It’s not just income discrepancy - that fact is endemic to capitalism - it is now a major disconnect from the middle class and its access to gainful employment.
The huge failure in the money market due to criminal dissemblance on the part of financial service industries and the failure of government to regulate them is the cause. Credit dried up. Credit which is synonmous with debt financing, which is synonomous with capital. The economy almost came to a grinding halt. Yes I blame the plutocracy. I blame private sector corruption - absolutely. Don’t call empirical attribution of cause whining, bitching or any other dismissive pejorative. The government had to supply the capital - that is socialism, corporate welfare, hence the deficit. To whine about that is a right wing ploy to further undermine the middle class.

“With grace and openness, Obama invited the Republicans to engage those issues,” - Joe Conason

-

After two years of the president’s evocation of political opponents as “enemies” who’s asses must be kicked, who must be relegated to the backseat, after years of publicly speaking in terms of knives, guns and imploring supporters to get angry with opponents, Mr Obama gracefully and openly engage republicans?

You have an interesting way to viewing the world, Mr Conason.

RL: It is an exceptionalist revision to whitewash American complicity in its own enslavement to corporate dictators.

Enslavement? OK, why not. I call Income Unfairness de facto incarceration in poverty.

Still, the bitching and moaning about America’s “plutocracy” in blogs is not worth a fly’s fart. It’s just so much boring catharsis. Why?

If one looks at the work of Pickety-Saez, based upon research of income data at its origin with the passage of Income Tax law in 1913, one realizes that Income Unfairness already existed then. (See here, in pdf, Figure 1).

Meaning that quite probably it went back to very early 19th century - though there is no way of proving that fact, it is difficult to imagine otherwise.

We have had a recession recently and many want to blame a plutocracy.  Where have the American people been? They just woke up? Hell, it’s always been there!

And, of course, whilst we’re at it, let’s blame Obama!

Such an accusation is unacceptable because it is without foundation. It has no sense and does not bear scrutiny under the light of factual history.

If you want to get elected in America, you must cozy up to BigMoney. There is no other way.

If we want to take money out of politics and thus change our Political Class, we need to elect Congressional representatives who will put that objective into legislation. (And let’s start with the Senate, where 40% are declared millionaires who quite likely paid their way in.

(Do you think Milt Romney isn’t going to spend his wealth trying to get the presidency. Sure as hell he is—what else has he to do with his life?)

ITW
You probably mean Grover Norquist, not Nyquist. And I’m not following the anarchist connection. Norquist is fairly solidly—and always has been—on the far right. A useful link, for starters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist

Lafayette
“In the past are the seeds of the Present Economic Mess”
No doubt- only from a proper and accurate portrayal of the past.
I was not disputing the principle of learning from the past, but Obama’s ‘idealization of the past’, which is a peculiar concept and does not mean learning from the past. It is an exceptionalist revision to whitewash American complicity in its own enslavement to corporate dictators. Scapegoating government is too easy and in this case, a cover up, a Machiavellian opportunity for the dogged Right to dismantle all social services.

RL: That’s a very loose interpretation. The idealization of the past means nothing of the kind in any fair and honest semantic assessment.

In the past are the seeds of the Present Economic Mess.

A two trillion dollar wars since 911 and our national budget has gone to hell in a hand-basket. There is a real threat that the credit rating agencies will downgrade Uncle Sam.

If you don’t believe so, just ask someone at D&B. Which would be a first in American history. We may not be Greece, but neither are we Germany.

Besides, in the past, the Keynesian approach to rectifying lack of Demand was government expenditure. In most instances, that strategy worked.

In fact, Obama employed the Keynesian expansion-strategy upon entering office. Had he not, the unemployment numbers would not be less than 10%, but approaching 15%.

But calls for him to repeat that performance cannot be heeded. The economy must mend itself (and it is on its way to doing so) and the tax revenues from less employment will reduce UI-outlays and enhance TR (Tax Revenues)—both of which are goodness.

Actually and realistically, spending is the only way the public sector can move out of a recession, because it wasn’t government spending that got us into it.

This is pitifully naive conjecture. Of course it was. A lead-head Replicant PotUS stupidly reduced taxes and increased expenditure to pay for his pocket-wars over in the sandbox

And, like dolts, we voted him into office not once but twice. We are now paying-the-piper for such supine idiocy - and we deserve the salutary lesson it is giving us.

Any people that don’t have the intelligence to keep up with economic policy matters deserve to be manipulated by numb-heads who’s sole remit is dogma. Yes, it is so damn important it should not be left entirely in the hands of politicos.

Excuse me, FiftyGigs, but you’ve just described the EXACT policy aim of Grover Nyquist, to “Starve the Beast” and destroy government’s capability to affect the society and the economy. 

While Nyquist is radical, I’d hardly call him “leftist” although he’s clearly an anarchist.

Once again, Joe Conason plays the lackey for his boss in the White House. Obama has been spieling the same bull for four years now and the real unemployment rate is still 20 percent. Like the old saying goes…talk is cheap. What may have been imspiring speechifying too many two and three years ago is now just downright insulting.

“But that takes both time and money.”

Short-hand for political power, of which progressives have none. Worse yet, the farther left you go, the less likely you’ll find anyone who wants to do anything more than just make a general mess. Progressives call it anarchy and revolution.

Against this is a conservative movement, in which, the farther right you go, you find armed activists, dedicated to amassing political power by intimidation and physical force.

How many years after Roe v Wade, and the third bill brought by the House pertained to limiting abortion rights?

The course of our future government policy is clear, because progressives cannot amass power, or worse even sustain a long-term political strategy of incremental success.

Lafayette
“Translation: Government can no longer spend its way out of a recession. Meaning, he cannot raise budget expenditures solely to insure economic growth as he did when he first arrived in office.”
That’s a very loose interpretation.
The idealization of the past means nothing of the kind in any fair and honest semantic assessment.
If, for the sake of argument, it means that - I heard the president say something like that in part - but all told, it didn’t add up on the subject of spending.
Actually and realistically, spending is the only way the public sector can move out of a recession, because it wasn’t government spending that got us into it.
Regulation, regulation regulation.
The deficit is the fever, not the disease. The cause is the monetary irresponsibility by the US brokerage houses. the spawning of fake financial products that blew everything up as surely as an IED.
The TARP was the defuser of those dangerous explosives.
It has been repaid.

SHOW ME DA MONEY

RL: WTF is “shaped by an idealistic view of our past, in which government encourages growth” supposed to mean?

Translation: Government can no longer spend its way out of a recession. Meaning, he cannot raise budget expenditures solely to insure economic growth as he did when he first arrived in office.

He is also saying, I suggest, that economic growth must be “organic”, that is, naturally generated by the economy (meaning Consumption, that is, Disposable Income that drives consumers to spend). This past quarter showed some solid economic growth, but one bird does not make a flock.

In an immediate sense, Obama is right. The government cannot expand spending without hurting, perhaps irrevocably, it’s ability to maintain the national debt. Any lack of confidence in the American economy’s ability to maintain its debt will cause debt-holders to dump their T-notes. This will cause the price of the T-note to rise and therefore debt-maintenance rises also.

Which means either more taxes must be collected or Federal expenditures must be reduced to find the extra funds necessary for debt-maintenance.

POST SCRIPTUM

That’s the short-run. In the long-run, however, the handwriting should be on the wall. We have an economy that cannot create sufficient numbers of jobs at the un- and semi-skilled level of employment.

We need therefore, drastically, to find a means for enhancing workforce skill-levels. Which can only come about from a wholesale revamping of our educational system - from primary to secondary to tertiary schooling.

But that takes both time and money. Time, we got. So show me da money?

AMERICA’S WINNER-TAKE-ALL MENTALITY

Arguments in favor of personal freedom are praiseworthy, particularly because they coincide basically with American principles but also even sentiments across all social classes in all nations.

But that is no longer the question, I submit. We’ve gone beyond that since the demise of totalitarian communism. The question today is this: Are personal freedoms unlimited? I suspect not: “Where my liberties begin, yours stop”. At issue in the debate, therefore, is the balance between collective and individual liberties.

To my mind, this means that if an individual is reckless (say, in the conduct of their profession) and it threatens the well-being of myself and my family, then that person’s freedom of action has gone beyond acceptable bounds.

That’s the challenge within our Collective Society. That is, our socioeconomic context is continually challenged by the need to balance Personal Freedoms and Social Responsibility - the flip-side of a two-faced coin. But, what Collective Society?

Wake up; unless you are living alone on a small island somewhere, the society that envelops you, that protects you, that nurtures you is a Collective Existence. (Know any zillionaires who made their fortunes all alone on an island?)

The human animal first collected into groups out of self-protection. Then when the bands/tribes of human nomads settled into a sedentary existence where they learned the mutual benefit of productivity brought about by the Division of Labor Rule, mankind was (from then on) fixed into a Collective Existence. Our common history describes (but does not explain) that evolution over thousands of years.

So, what is different today?

We have come to the point of development where our Collective Existence (in the form of truly global economies) can generate huge sums of financial value. It is at this point that we like to think that Personal Freedom is limitless; that is, it applies to one’s ability to accumulate vast amounts of riches without contributing equitably to the common welfare.

This Winner-take-all Mentality, unleashed over the past 40 years, has shown its deepest fault-line in the Great Credit Seizure of September 2008. When the Toxic Waste took down the house of cards that realty debt and debt-derivatives had built for itself—motivated by only one purpose.

Greed.

POST SCRIPTUM

We, as a nation and a society, are still faced with the same complex riddle. Just how far can Personal Freedom be taken without injury to the common welfare of our fellow citizens? Beyond what limit, however, do we stifle irremediably achievement and innovation both key to our economic development?

That is, where is the proper balance between the two?

The limit of Personal Freedom is not as far as we think, particularly by those on the “other side of the divide”. These benighted people think that our freedoms are greatly unlimited by the Constitution and, therefore, should remain so?

God help us ...

Right - he laced the toxic Kool-Aid about American exceptionalism with saccharine. WTF is “shaped by an idealistic view of our past, in which government encourages growth” supposed to mean?
The government did not encourage growth by allowing criminal financial practices to continue unchecked and unprosecuted. An idealistic view of the past is an erroneous, revisionist view. If anything is, the past is concrete and factual - irreducibly so. It convicts the unholy alliance between government and big business.
That ugly truth cannot be idealized - the only option is to filter it in a Polyanna haze of rhetorical vapor.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Obama is so full of sh*t.

“He urged the nation’s millionaires to give up their
obscene tax breaks and set forth a deal to close
loopholes and lower rates if every corporation pays its
share of taxes.”

After years, 12 to be exact about the current run of capitulation, our glorious Democrat leader URGES
corrupt rich folks to GIVE UP their unfair tax dodges. 
i am so unimpressed I could puke!