DESTINY

os: Any successful economy, socialist or otherwise, depends upon production

This fact escapes no-one pursuing a progressive agenda. We are not the kind to believe in a “hand-out”, but those who think in terms of a “hand-up”.

If you issued from the American middle-class these past five decades, you had a chance to go to university and get a sufficiently good education. But, if you were too poor, you had an opportunity to become either a criminal or flip hamburgers for the minimum wage.

What sort of a destiny was that?

Pray tell, where is anybody who lives in slum going to get the money necessary for a postsecndary education at a state school.

From WikiP: The mean annual Total Cost (including all costs associated with a full-time post-secondary schooling, such as tuition and fees, books and supplies, room and board), as reported by the Census Bureau for the school year 2001/2, according to the various college years was as follows:

  * College years 1 to 2: $9489 (per year)
  * College years 3 to 4: $11901 (per year)

Total, four year schooling: $42780

  * College years 5 or plus: $13669 (per year)
  * Vocational, technical, business or other: $7401 (per year)

On average, history indicates that schooling cost inflation rates are around 8% per annum. Compound the above 4-year university schooling value for ten years ... this is what you get:  Total, four year schooling - $79180 (or close to $20K per year).

How many of the poor can assure such a expense? How many arrange a loan and repay it? If the government does not loan them the money, who will?
 
A Progressive Agenda will find children who deserve a postsecondary education and put them through it, whether college, university or vocational training. 

And the money spent for all those children will likely be far less costly than were we obliged to send incarcerate them 5/10 years for criminal activity.

PROGRESSIVE IS AS PROGRESSIVE DOES

os: I think you’ll find an ally in former Labor Scty Robert Reich if you care to search him out.

I know of Robert Reich and read him very often. Yes, he’s a good supporter of the “Progressive Agenda”, whatever that means. (See below.)

Reich was received at the Elysees Palace (the French White House) recently, along with French economists, because of his work at the Progressive Governance Council. (And I will remind you that the Elysees Palace is currently inhabited by a Right-wing French politician.)

He and Kurgman are, also, very well known in France amongst economists. He distinguishes himself from Krugman by this remark made in an interview with the NYT: “I don’t believe in redistribution of wealth for the sake of redistributing wealth. But I am concerned about how we can afford to pay for what we as a nation need to do.”

If one googles “progressive agenda” there is a deluge of pages from the UK. When in fact, I don’t think the Brits have comparatively any more of a Progressive Political Stance than any other country.

So, I feel, having seen both versions (American and European), I feel the necessity to focus on just two aspects of an agenda that is very large. Those aspects are National Health Care Services (aka the Public Option) and Most Effective Primary-to-Tertiary Education System?

Especially, as regards the latter, as low cost as possible, including government subvention of tertiary education in order to prepare adolescents for gainful employment in a global labor market.

If those two elements can be set in place in America, given Uncle Sam’s present mindset, it will have meant unbelievably great progress in social democracy. More so, the American Democrats are still far too much inclined to Rightwards to be classed as a truly progressive political movement.

Blame that on Billy-boy, if you like, who saw the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow by sucking up to dot.com billionaires—in, first, an effort to get himself reelected and then to grab some chits to get his wife elected to office.

And when Hillary comes around again, she will use much the same means for getting funding. So great is the need to have a massive amount of funds to get elected (to even dog-catcher) in the US.

That factor is fundamental in the rot eating away at American democracy. As an example: The 17th Amendment that called for election of the Senate by Popular Vote was passed in 1913. Already about 40% of the Senate is constituted of millionaires.

Does anybody really think that, aside from Ted Kennedy, anyone in that august body had any real concern for America’s down-and-outs?

POST SCRIPTUM

My search of the Internet came up with this list:
*REGULATE BIG BANKS
*KEEP THE INTERNET OPEN WITH NET NEUTRALITY
*ENDS WARS IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISATAN
*UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE WITH A PUBLIC OPTION
*REDUCE AND SECURE NUCLEAR WEAPONS
*PRICE CARBON AND REDUCING EMISSIONS
*RAISE TAXES ON RICH—NOT WORKING FAMILIES
*REFORM IMMIGRATION LAWS
*INVEST IN EDUCATION AND SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT
*SECURE REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS
*REPEAL POLICIES THAT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST GAY AMERICANS
*END TORTURE
*REFORM LOBBYING, CAMPAIGN FINANCE, AND OPEN-RECORDS
*REPEAL POLICIES THAT VIOLATE CIVIL LIBERTIES

That’s quite a laundry-list, but I’ll buy it.

Unfortunately, I’m in France and not America. Nonetheless, not enough people are buying it stateside. Which is why I prefer to remain in France.

Lafayette, first, I enjoy our direct, yet civil, exchanges.  Courtesy has always been important—well before Tucson, so a moment here to express my thanks.
———-
Also, compliments to you on your 2/22 6:58am post to LT.  Your plain-talk endorsement of Social Democracy is more compelling than all the florid rhetorical spins and snake-oil sales tricks of the Sirota-types.  I think you’ll find an ally in former Labor Scty Robert Reich if you care to search him out.  His latest book is “Aftershock,” a quick & easy read and a good one. 

That said, know that your endorsement comes from a point of comfort.  Any successful economy, socialist or otherwise, depends upon production (see below). 
Things may feel rosy in France for now, but not so much por vos amis in Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Greece.
Why? 
Too many riding the wagon, to few pulling.
———-

Next, as for your reply posted 2/22 4:58pm & your call for more government spending:
Pure Keynesian here and George Soros agreed with you on Fareed Zakaria’s GPS show this past Sunday.
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/politics/2011/02/18/gps.soros.economy.cnn 
and here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rg4ykyL59IE (begin 9:20)

The new political angle is pretty obvious, and rather clever.  The Left is attempting to blame cuts in services for a continued or worsened recession—even before the cuts occur.  Thus shifting blame for both the cause and length of the recession upon the Repubs. Sadly, it may fly.  My hope and prediction is for a common-sense compromise that allows government to remain running (no March 4 shutdown) but stimulates growth through fiscal responsibility.

What’s flawed with the Keynesian/Sorosian view is the chain of reasoning.  They always put the Spending Cart before the Production horse.
More on that in a moment. 
 
But first, consider the possibility that FDR actually LENGTHENED the Depression with his alphabet soup agencies and expanded government.
http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/FDR-s-Policies-Prolonged-Depression-5409.aspx
When you read the part about “lawmakers (who) gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies,” keep in mind this piece was published in 2004, during Bush 43’s first term, well before Obama’s Presidency.

Next, understand that government creates nothing, produces nothing. 
Government spending comes only from tax receipts. 
And we cannot tax or borrow our way out of a recession.

The solution?
Follow the money:  Government spending comes from taxes.  Taxes come from profit.  Profit from sales.  Sales from demand.  Demand from utility.  Utility from production.  Production from capital.  Capital from labor.
Labor precedes all else.
Reduce unemployment and the recovery will follow up the chain.

To increase employment, reduce (better yet, eliminate) taxes upon labor.  Tax consumption instead.
My suggestion has always been to eliminate FICA/Medicare taxes.
Fund social security and medicare with a point-of-purchase, non-regressive National Sales Tax (about 3%).

THE LESSONS OF HISTORY

os: Greed caused the recession. Going forward, the imperative is fiscal responsibility.

It did indeed, as was the case with the Great Depression sparked by the Stock Market Crash of 1929. But, were there other factors? What protracted the depression for almost a decade until WW2.

The parallels between the Great Depression (the 1930s) and the Great Recession (that began in 2009) are many.

One of the factors that many economists think was the base reason for the Depression’s longevity was contracting the money supply concurrent with a Trade War by which each nation tried to restrict imports. We’ve had no Trade War, but we are trying to reduce government spending - which is a colossal mistake.

For this reason, the present mindset of the Republicans (to reduce the deficit) could not come at the worst possible time. Such numskull reasoning was in place during the early years of the Great Depression - until FDR did a 180° and expanded government expenditures with Alphabet Soup Work Programs. The numskull reasoning is back since the midterm elections as the Replicants want to reduce spending.

It’s as if, 80 years later, we seem to have learned nothing from the experience of the 1930s. As George Santayana, the philosopher said (and I paraphrase): Those who refuse to learn from history are forced to repeat it.

TeaParty that too, Sarah ....

POST SCRIPTUM

Regardless of both the deficit and the debt-to-GDP ratio, the US should be expanding Federal expenditures in order to put people back to work. All GDP is consumer-centric and the only way out of a recession is to spend. That is, spending by the government that enhances consumer Disposable Income that provokes spending by the consumer.

Doing otherwise is a slippery slope down to perdition. When the recovery should take 3/4/5 years, we are implementing a policy that could very well double that number.

lt: If you examine those wo promote socialism they seem to fall into one of two catagories (probably oversimplified): 1)the elite, the monied class, the well educated movers and shakers who envision population control(probably necessary eventually, but socialists really don’t like us regular folk,

If this is what you know of socialism, I suspect you wouldn’t recognize it if it bit you on the nose.

Come to Europe and live here a while. Social Democracy - the extant version of “socialism” you seem to fear, since you seem not know how to define it - is alive and well.

Nobody here even remotely resembles what you depict. The rule is quite simple: The interests of the collective prevail over that of the individual.

For which, taxes are high in order to pay for Public Services (like a decent Health Care Public Option) that are available to all, regardless of whether they are employed or not. (Aka, “true universality”.) Or an education to whatever postsecondary level you are capable of pursuing, without hanging the albatross of debt around one’s neck.

There is no denial of any freedoms. People still vote their elected officials. People remonstrate and demonstrate against their elected officials. Life goes on.

But it is not a game of roulette. There are safety nets and the holes in the net allow fewer people to drop through. That’s what taxes are for, to close the holes and allow the less fortunate at least some dignity in their lives.

You may rail all you want for lower taxes, but in the end you are playing into the hands of the plutocrats - who lowered those taxes long ago (for their own benefit).

Ya pay fo what ya get.

Sirota’s major premise is false.
Greed caused the recession.
Going forward, the imperative is fiscal responsibility.
There is no paradox.

SOCIAL INVESTMENT

One of the most interesting articles to have appeared in TruthDig. Kudos to Mr. Sirota.

I subsume the notion of “submerged state” under the heading of Social Investments, meaning the sorts of investments that achieve societal objectives—ranging the gamut from collecting the garbage to lifetime skills training of a nation’s workforce.

Social Investments are thus key to promoting Public Services. Meaning they have a profound effect upon how and for what purposes public funds are spent.

USAGE MEASUREMENTS

In fact, the OECD tracks Social Investment in nations and even has a Social Investment Index. Concurrent with this is also a set of Social Metrics; for instance the number of 25/64 year old adults who have a tertiary education - which is a good indicator of how well a nation’s workforce is prepared to create durable employment at decent (national) salaries.

It does not matter what we call it. Ms Mandell can say it is the “submerged state” because people do not know that they benefit from its expenditure. How many of us feel that we benefit from the fact that policing of the neighborhood prevented a break-in at our residence? Policing, yes, is a Social Investment as is the entirety of our Law System. (In fact, it so important a Public Service that it is a bulwark of the nation.)

If a nation, on the other hand, thinks its priorities in terms of Public Services is to make sure al Qaeda does not bring down yet another skyscraper somewhere in the country, then necessarily its orientation is quite different. (Ditto going off and fighting al Qaeda on its “home ground”.)

WHO DOES WHAT?

The question that remains is the distinction between who makes the investment and upon what terms. Meaning do people work for the state, which performs the service, or do they work for a private enterprise that is contracted by the state to perform the service. That differentiation is not always easy to make.

Let’s not forget that, either way, jobs are created, services performed and economic growth entails.

MY POINT: Guns or butter

One of the first lessons of economic governance is that a country cannot have everything. It has to make choices amongst what are called (in economic parlance) “guns or butter” options.

Those choices are often difficult and since politicians are popularly elected they can often manipulate mindsets to pursue highly partisan options. Like “War is a Good Investment”, but a “National Health Care Public Option is a Bad Investment”.

It all depends upon how you define and measure your Social Return on Investment; that is, its measurement criteria. The best measurement, I suggest, is “utilitarian”. Meaning does the investment do the “most good for the most people”, or (otoh) does it do the “most good for the least people”?

Which is for we, the people, to judge. But, pray tell, who asks us ... ?

I am older and wonder if I am following the same plaint of seniors in thinking our nation is “going to hell”. I look back at former times and see the same rancor, propaganda, and idiocy but, though we have all that in today’s world, I do not see in any checks and balances to subdue that rancor, propaganda and idiocy. Before the depression, average Americans were oppressed but they had a relatively free media (fourth estate) to reveal corruption and to call out lies. The government’s 3 branches were not as compromised as they are today, especially the Supreme Court whose majority roots for radical conservatives and business. We didn’t have a Fox Noise that is an extension of right-wing politics and has no restrictions on lying.

The same Joseph Goebbels whom commenter “laurence tribe” quotes below is also infamous for the “big lie” formulation upon which so much “governance” has always been CONducted by the plutoligarchy and its hired-guns.  Could it be that Goebbel’s own attempt to associate the death-dealing (and -worshiping) Nazi scheme with the generally-seen-as-benevolent concept of “community,” itself falls right into that counterfeit category?

Anyway, this Old Savage uses the term “community” here only with reluctance, and always with such qualifiers as “genuine” and “Living.”  This is done to make a careful distinction between its meaning in the original Natural Language of Organic Functional Integrity (as best as this Old Man can get that into impoverished “English”), and all the ubiquitous random collections of the ersatz “individual” to which it is applied relentlessly here in these latter days….evidently in order to purposely corrupt and devalue the word to near worthlessness (if not worse, which is to say active toxicity) in its common usage.

The D-/L-/Nakotah word “Tiyoshpaye” is perfectly descriptive of that ORGANization of Human Society which fits us for our given Function as a component of the immune system in the Natural Living Arrangement of our Mother Earth.  There is an apparent reluctance, however, among many who participate in this and other such fora, to accept that us surviving Primitive Savages here on Turtle Island (and elsewhere) might actually have some significantly more accurate perceptions of our common condition (and more useful words to describe these) than their own supposedly so much more sophisticated and “advanced” and “superior” and “scientific” collective “self” has come-up-with.

So those who CONtinue to fear for their “self,” within The Tiyoshpaye Way, might better be wary of that very false-IDentity keeping them trapped in the Virtual world-o’-hurt, and so cut-off from their natural birthright of unfettered access to the all we need from our Whole Living Arrangement….apart from which they’ll be much-sooner-than-later exterminated by the machinations of the now “global” command-and-CONtrol apparatus some are perceptively calling “the fourth reich.”

The radio-activated “self,” the ecologically carcinogenic by-product of the inevitable decay of the lethally dysfunctional “nuclear family,” has displaced in our domesticated Human Relations the Natural Person they are, by-nature, born to be.  The “self,” as such, remains a huge obstacle to their recovery of that natural attribute, and thus to their coalescing as Natural Persons into the Organic Form of Humanity in which alone resides that Living Virtue of Organic Functional Integrity….without which they have no Way whatsoever of addressing to mutually beneficial effect that CONgeries of ills symptomatic of the terminal stages of the “civilization” disease process here.

Among us surviving free wild Native Peoples there are no “individuals,” and the basic Human Form is that of the Tiyoshpaye, or genuine Living Human Community.  Our freedom, as Persons and Peoples, is grounded entirely in the natural imperatives of our Organic Function….and essential to our adequate fulfillment of that Function.  We also enjoy orders-of-magnitude greater Personal freedom than do our CON-TRAPtion-CONfined, “individual”-ized, “self”-obsessed Human Relatives. 

Our natural organic freedom, unlike the cheap-imitation-plastic-substitutes for it foisted-off upon our captive Sisters and Brothers, is not any kind of thought-system CONceit.  It is not the CONditional “grant” of any institutionalized authority.  It is not an etheric “gift” from any disembodied entity.  It is ALL of ours, Living….

ALL TOGETHER….NOW!!!!

HokaHey!

lawrence tribe

So its ok for the free market health system to euthanize grandma? (which it does everyday)

Why is it that a conservatives only argument against government (peoples) run social programs is “look what happened in nazi Germany”? Other nations seem to be able to mix the best intentions of socialism and capitalism without marching against the world in the name of Facism. But hey, that’s why they will be the ones to deal with the late 21st century’s problems, not us. For we will have collapsed upon ourselves long before that.

I always like to ask conservatives and libertarians, what if we eliminated government, and everyone would be on their own, to fend for themselves? You know, dog eat dog anarchy. What if, under that system, you built a good life for yourself, a true entepenure! Nice house, business, family. Now what if the guy across the street used his “unalienable” rights and shot you, and took your stuff? That would be OK?

Ah, what a world it would be, not having to deal witht the social reponsibilities of “community”.

I don’t know whether it’s my not understanding or understanding and not agreeing with Suzanne Mettler’s concept of a submerged state. These days everything is on the table. There’s a lot of fog and mirrors on top of it all - but all government services have been inventoried in some way or other, from infrastructure to Social Security - especially since the corporatocracy has programmed the political machine to take apart the New Deal and all the social safeguards that the liberal class is supposed to protect.
Its not paradoxical - its illusory - America’s head up the ass of the body politic.

“BigB” needn’t worry about anybody dragging us surviving free wild Indians “down to hell” with their own sorry “self.”  This Old Person, for example, was born at a place some of our People call “The Gates of Hell,” and has never been under any illusions about which side of them amerika is on.

Meantime, those here continuing to stump for “voting” their way out of this soon-to-be terminal CONdition seem unable to see and accept the stark fact that they “voted” their way into it….fought, bought, and thought it, too.  It’s too bad the fellah ‘n’ gal captives among ‘em to whom they look for “leadership,” through and out-of this mess, are every bit as lost in its CONvolutions as they are.

Apart from our Mother Earth’s Living Arrangement, none of these well-meaning but woefully ignorant “individual”-ized domesticates has the chance of a snowball in hell of even getting their next breath.  Yet they go on foolishly aiding and abetting the tormenting entities’ attempt to destroy us ALL, and render Her as lifeless as they are.

The true believers can “vote” ‘til they’re blue-in-the-face, but only recovering the Living Virtue of Humanity’s Organic Functional Integrity, as vital components in Her immune system, ORGANized as genuine Human Communities, can get our tame Sisters and Brothers even a GhostDancers’ chance of finding The Living Way through this….

ALL TOGETHER….NOW!!!!

HokaHey!

“The Great Paradox” as I see it, is in our admiration for the people of the middle
east, who bleed and die for the right to vote for self-determination and our own
mistrust and forfeiture of the vote in this country. The strength of Participatory
Democracy is found in the act of taking part.While, I grant ,it is extremely
discouraging to watch corporate monies control the discourse and direction of
the ballot box, I believe its the best mechanism we have to make any difference; to
have any voice. Until we come up with a better way, its all we’ve got. Corporate
Oligarchy will prevail if we continue to acquiesce our right and obligation to
participate.

Bravo, Vote!
My only addition would be re: Legacy.

We agree, there is such a thing as having too much money (“disgustingly rich”) but it’s like holding one’s liquor:  the amount varies from one person to the next. 
No need to worry over the Scrooges among us, as time and nature place the ultimate tax upon every individual—death. 
Estate tax or not, those who have more than they can spend cannot take the balance with them.

Death, by the way, is what distinguishes individuals from corporations and why the latter should not be allowed to make political contributions.

General coment after
reading people here saying
“it’s all rigged”, Part of
voting is accepting defeat
gracefully.  They can’t rig it
if it isn’t close.  Exit polling,
not to be confused with
opinion polling, is
notoriously acurate.
As far as bailouts go, I
would be in favor of
bailouts if the recipients
had to meet the same
requirements that the
average person would have
to meet to get a loan under
the same conditions and
with the same interest rate
we would have to pay. 
This would lower the
deficit and lower taxes so
the right wing can either
agree or reveal that they
are complete and utter
fakers and blowhards. 
Period.
On legacy, the thing we
need to remember when
people talk about leaving
debt to future generations
is how many people have
more money than anyone
could ever spend and
refuse to help out.  It is
their fault and they should
have that shame held over
them.  There is such a
thing as disgustingly rich.

Big B, no insults, no personal attacks or name-calling.  Nope, I don’t feel picked on, we’re cool.  Thanks for your civility.

My opinion is that our voting mechanism is legit as it can be.  No way to be 100% sure, largely taking it on faith.  Perhaps I’m naive, but I’ve seen no hard evidence to the contrary, just chatter on blogs like this one.

As for the extreme elements becoming emboldened lately, yes, here we agree. 
Perhaps that’s reason enough to vote right there.
The fringes won’t drown out the rest of us unless we remain silent.
Always believed the Voting is more important that who wins.

The electoral machinery is broken. That’s the reason those who nearly destroyed the system with their mindless deregulation ideology have suffered no consequences and now dominate the House. The problem is the electronic voting machine in conjunction with the corporate media. Who elects those who want to eliminate/privatize social security? Not a majority of members of either party. It is done through vote rigging. It was corruption of the vote that brought Bush into office, combined with Al Gore’s lack of a spinal cord. The corruption of the Supreme Court was an essential ingredient, of course. The reactionary Uncle Tom on the court, conspiring with his ideological joy boys, have put the corporate fascists firmly in control with Citizen’s United. The gutless weasel, Obama, has slimed the progressive agenda beyond recognition with his bait & switch.

It may be that there are a few conservatives out there like Ron Paul who actually want to eliminate or privatize social security and return the nation to an ideal condition that never existed, but they do not represent an actionable majority opinion in either party. “Perception” dominates only because there is no means to actually gauge voter opinion. Our elections are universally fraudulent.

Don’t worry, TAO Walker, if you are correct that the current incarnation of polite white society that has ruled the world for the last thousand years is about to collapse in a cesspool of consumerism and debotchery, then you and your people may just be able to sit cooking at a campfire and shout"I told you so’s” at the patethic remnants of our empire cowering in the dark.

Then again, we may just do what we have always done best, and that is to drag you to hell with us.

(I am serious about the first part. I remember watching the news from LA after the Northridge quake about 20 years ago and telling my wife that this is what the world will look like after the upheaval, spanish americans were sitting around in their front yards, preparing food over an open fire. they had constructed rudementary shelter, and were singing and helping each other. On the other side of the street, the white middle and upper middle class people were sitting on the curb,looking sad and lost and pathetic, hoping beyond hope that someone, anyone would come help them. Yup, it will be interesting to see what we can do without an app to guide us.)

This Indian wonders whether “gerard” would apply her “Oppression only creates more rebellion” rule to the industrial-strength oppression of Nature by those same “the people” she expects to sooner-or-later rise-up against the oppression inflicted upon their own too-precious “self,” by their “individual”-ized fellah ‘n’ gal domesticates afflicted with what she says is the “selfishness”-induced blindness of “power.”  Does she allow (anywhere in her otherwise apparently exclusively human-ist philosophy) for the Mother of our Natural Living Arrangement reacting similarly (to the depredations wrought upon Her by the obsessively and relentlessly “self”-referential behavior of billions of domesticated people), that is to say, in a Way that throws-off these tormentors?

The owner/operators of the virtual world-o’-hurt CON-TRAPtion certainly do attempt to keep its captives CONvinced that they’re completely insulated from the negative CONsequences of their foolhardy abuses of this Living World.  The Natural Fact, though, is that this insanely “self”-ish disconnect blinds those subjects, too, to the debilitating effects of all the increasingly devastating “fall-out” from their own massively mediated delusion.

There is no real relief from the pain of their mostly “self”-inflicted predicament that doesn’t require “the people” to fulfill conscientiously and adequately the given Organic Function of Humanity within Earth’s Living Arrangement, as vital components in Her immune system.  There is no Way for them to do that except as Natural Persons ORGANized in genuine Communities.  The ersatz “individual” simply does not have access to the Living Virtue of Organic Functional Integrity essential to the wholeness and health of ALL-concerned.

“The people” cannot help their"self” to anything but a huge serving of “global” disaster….but we might still help our Mother Earth and each other to the viable option of The Tiyoshpaye Way.

HokaHey!

I’m in Ca and it will take the bond market to put our borrowing rates to 20% before we stop giving ourselves “free services”

Services performed by the state for the people cannot be “submerged” for long because ultimately the people prove to be the state, not the leaders, the rulers, the panderers and lackeys but the people—right, left and in between, rich, poor, ignorant, wise, young, old, men, women, kids.
  However it averages out, they are bound by their human needs to rise and present their demands, hopes and expectations, without even realizing their power.  Ultimately they say: “No!” or “Yes!” 
  Oppression only creates more rebellion.
  The selfishness of power makes it blind to this connection.

Sorry, I don’t mean to pick on oddsox. I found your voting hypothesis to pretty insightful. I just think we may have seen the end of the voices of reason at the voting booth. Our votes are either not counted, or drowned out by the “lunatic” fringe.

This piece is like those sci-fi epics that project into some imagined “future” the same rampant idiotic attitudes and epidemic feckless behavior that are presently so symptomatic of the terminal stages of the “civilization” disease process.  If our GreatGrandChildren aren’t wholly engaged in fulfilling the Organic Function of Humanity, as vital components in Earth’s immune system, ORGANized as genuine Human Communities having a sufficiency of the Living Virtue of Organic Functional Integrity necessary to the adequate fulfillment of our given Function, then they won’t even be around to marvel at the idiotic fecklessness, and its “unintended side-effects,” of their “individual”-ized domesticated forebears.

That’ll be no mystery to them, anyhow, since much of what they’ll be about is healing the hurts inflicted, and cleaning-up the mess made and left behind, by all that feckless idiocy….things better by-far to BE and DO….BE-DO-BE-DO!

Hokahey!

oddsox

“those who vote decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything”. I think uncle Nikita said that. It fits modern america like a glove, for who is counting our votes? Debold, and the corporate cronies that now run our nation. Oh, you can vote alright, but how do you know it was counted? And my experience at the local political level serves as a lesson felt all over the nation, most local seats, the power base that helps decide who runs for the cadillac offices in the upper eschelons, are filled with unapposed candidates. Often local business hacks with ties to some church or social organization whose (voting) people are easily influenced by some influx of money from an unknown source. It’s something the neo-cons figured out back in 70’s. All politics are local. All you need to do is influence the local gas station owner, the local preacher, the local real estate agent. And when you have the deep pockets and centers of influence the nine families birthed back in the 70’s (the Heritage foundation, CPAC, PNAC, Kato, AEI, API, ect) it becomes just a matter of places and dates for your full agenda to be realized.

The USA has become what Goebbels envisioned just over sixty years ago. We are (have) become the fourth reich (and lest we forget what happened to the first three)

This assumes that someone will be left who rembers the former United States of
America.

More than likely at this point we will be just a short chapter in a PRC history book or a
TV special depicting, a third world country, filled with starving drug addicted masses,
who struggle daily for clean water, a place to live and the Basic necessities of life..

Ojama’s betrayals couldn’t have come at a worse time in our history.

Sirota: False major premise.
———————-
Lafayette: Point taken, but I both blog and vote. Bet you do, too.
As explained in the piece you reference, an individual will vote when PB + D > C, where P is the Probability of 1 vote deciding the election, B is the Benefit or impact of the result, D is sense of Duty or pleasure Derived and C is the Cost and/or effort needed to vote.
Since P (and B, according to your Post Scriptum) are infinitesimal, it largely comes down to D vs. C.
“Tea Party that, ” you write. 
But Tea Partiers DO vote and knowing this may motivate others on their opposite pole to vote as well. 
And vice versa.
Big D’s on the political fringes.
It’s the middle folk who need a need the larger reason to vote.  If a sense of duty fails to motivate, then the act of voting itself (using a new voting machine, positive social interaction, free parking?) will need to be perceived as more pleasant in order to increase participation. 
Personally, I don’t mind either way. 
Either D increases or my minuscule P does. 
————————
Expat: If you’re right, God Help Us.
No need to call you a nut though; if you’re wrong you will be forgotten and ignored next time.

VOTER TURNOUT

DS: Politics, though, is no longer even mildly related to logic. It’s all about perception.

Perhaps, but I will make another proposition. It is all about apathy.

And not just the sort of apathy that occurred after Lead-head ascended to the throne only to flame-out 8 years later.

I mean long-term indifference to both political parties and the circus called politics. To such an extent that it has seriously debilitated the the key foundation stone of all political activity called voting.

How’s that? Easy - take a gander at the voter turnout statistics when listed comparatively here.

Take a good long look at the listing by clicking on “6 International Differences”. The US is down at the bottom alphabetically of the list. Go to the top of the column “Voter Turnout” in that list and click on the ranking icon there.

Bingo! Uncle Sam’s in First Place!!! Meaning the lowest voter turnout of all the nations listed.

We make jokes of Italian politics? Italians vote 90% of the time, whereas the Yanks vote barely half the time. TeaParty that.

POST SCRIPTUM

And what is the cause of this apathy? Good question. If I had an answer I’d write a book.

But the short version is simply apathy due to an overarching sense in a voting population that is almost evenly divided between the Left and the Right that any individual vote does not matter. Nothing changes, always the same faces. Always the same blather. Always the same feckless gridlock between the two opposing sides.

MY POINT

Which makes me think of time I spent in Switzerland and my observed experience of the Swiss marching to the polls ten or twenty times a year in popular referendums—because they are a serious people who don’t fool around with their right to vote.

Not like the Yanks who prefer to blather-in-a-blog. Lotta good that is ever going to do to reform America’s political class ...