I have a rule of thumb which I apply to all but a select few
journalists, commentators and insightful people. That rule of thumb
is one taught to me by my sweet old Gramma Ludwig: "The proof is in
the pudding". So, if it doesn't taste just right, then don't eat it!
I used to take everything with a grain of salt, but nowadays it's
taking more than salt to cover the brown taste.
In about 5 minutes I'll tune on Thom Hartman on RT TV. He's pretty
good, even though he is a Liberal Democrat. He has good instincts
once I set aside that he voted for Clinton in the general election.
He'd backed Bernie Sanders until the DNC got done trashing him.
Anyway, it's off to TV Land.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/9/17, Demaya, Diego via acb-chat <acb-chat@acblists.org> wrote:
> GOP campaigning to strip patients of key legal protections
> 3/6/2017
>
> We all know how con artists work the streets. One might bump into you in a
> train or in a crosswalk, while the other grabs your wallet. Or one might
> smile and chat with a mom at a playground, while her partner nabs the
> purse.
>
> Patients and consumers may want to watch carefully for the congressional
> version of the distraction scam, a series of stealth bills that aim to strip
> them of valuable legal rights and protections they'll need if harmed by big
> hospitals, rich doctors, big insurance companies, or giant corporations.
> With so much commotion under way with the new administration, Republicans
> sneakily have launched a furious, multi-pronged so-called "tort
> reform"<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.bna.com_push-2Denact-2Dcivil-2Dn57982084551_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=yiT8A_h2F-igL-01ma7YCcJmjDbjKHP-1XW8htFK0ZQ&e=>
> campaign. They've wanted it for a long time. They insist it is needed to
> curb excess and frivolous lawsuits, to save money for Uncle Sam (who often
> is a defendant), to make the economy work better, and to add jobs, and to
> make life in general more wonderful.
>
> Their arguments are counter-factual and lacking in evidence.
>
> Bloomberg news service has reported that the package of bills, a flurry that
> makes it harder for opponents to mobilize against, is "aimed at tilting the
> [civil justice] system more in the favor of companies," and away from
> ordinary individuals who've been hurt.
>
> Consider HR 1215, deceptively titled the Protecting Access to Care Act. (You
> need to always look for George Orwell's hand in the titles of these bills.)
> The GOP-controlled House of Representatives is steamrolling this measure
> through, with the Judiciary Committee surprising Democrats and opponents by
> swiftly introducing, marking up, and advancing it for further
> consideration.
>
> The bill would be a boon to doctors and hospitals at the expense of the
> rights of
> patients<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__www.statnews.com_2017_02_28_medical-2Dmalpractice-2Dcongress_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=gcZ11mP80KKJMD6Gl78_Q8g6ZNL3cVyVacvRVoBr-lg&e=>
> injured, often grievously, while seeking medical services. As Stat, the
> online health news service, reports about the bill:
>
> [It] would cap damages that can be paid by doctors, hospitals, and nursing
> homes. (Many states already limit awards paid by individual providers.) It
> would cover individuals who are insured under Medicare, Medicaid, veterans
> or military health plans, and the Affordable Care Act, and could also impact
> people covered under COBRA or health savings plans. …In addition to capping
> non-economic damages, the new legislation would give immunity to drug
> companies in cases in which patients were harmed by FDA-approved
> prescriptions. Although the bill would not limit recovery of economic
> damages — such as lost wages, past and future medical expenses, and other
> out-of-pocket costs for victims of medical negligence — it would cap
> payments for a victim's pain and suffering at $250,000. This would most
> affect people not in the workforce, such as the elderly, or children.
>
> Stat says doctors, hospitals, insurers, Big Pharma, and other big corporate
> health care interests are thrilled about this bill. Doctors long have
> claimed, without evidence, that the threat of malpractice suits forces them
> to practice costly defensive medicine, and that frivolous litigation
> increases the cost of modern medicine.
>
> But the Kaiser Health News service, an independent health information
> organization, recently posted a detailed take-down of this
> argument,<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.protectpatientsblog.com_2017_01_will-2Dcongress-2Drush-2Dunwarranted-2Dattack-2Drights-2Dinjured-2Dpatients-2Dsue-2Dmedical-2Dharm.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=Qi9Ybqryij4tCqQ-i6PX0cX0TmNzfvR5mw53BS5e_Oo&e=>
> based neither in reality nor fact. With KHN's permission, I cross-posted
> the story to this site. It reports that doctors are seeing some of the
> lowest levels of malpractice suits and payouts, as well as insurance costs.
> The system is running smoothly and creating no unusual burdens.
>
> It also is protecting patients harmed while seeking medical services as they
> seek justice, and the often significant economic and other support they will
> need, sometimes for a lifetime. Republicans boast that they modeled the
> House law after a now hoary California measure, which put in a $250,000 cap
> on non-economic damages in 1975, with no adjustment since for inflation.
> They don't mention that Gov. Jerry Brown, under pressure from famed consumer
> advocate Ralph Nader, has admitted the measure is off track and needs
> fixing.<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.latimes.com_business_la-2Dfi-2Dlazarus-2D20150807-2Dcolumn.html&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=axQ5lRErOUlO0Hz_vVrWJhqThGuVuGrTlasv6ZMU2O4&e=>
> Californians can't unwind the measure because it has such formidable
> backers, including doctors and hospitals.
>
> Bloomberg notes that Big Business is providing big bucks to remake the civil
> justice system in its interest, with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the
> National Association of Manufacturers playing big roles.
>
> The half-dozen GOP measures, Bloomberg says, "contain provisions to rewrite
> class-action practice, aid defendants striving to keep cases out of
> plaintiff-friendly state courts, and punish attorneys who file dubious
> claims. They also seek to put new limits on settlements entered into by the
> Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency, and require
> more disclosures by asbestos victims who seek compensation from bankruptcy
> trusts." One also targets the settlement process for citizen suits.
>
> House Republicans, including Bob Goodlatte, a Virginian who has been a key
> ally for the asbestos industry and who chairs the Judiciary Committee, have
> been emboldened in pushing their retread proposals because the GOP controls
> all three branches of government now.
>
> But this wrong-headed effort can be traced to the "U.S. Chamber of Commerce
> and a small number of the chamber's gigantic industry members who have
> liability exposure for harming the public," Joanne Doroshow, founder of the
> consumer rights group Center for Justice & Democracy in New York, told
> Bloomberg.
>
> Pamela Gilbert, another consumer advocate, is quoted: "The American public
> supports the civil justice system and the Seventh Amendment right to a jury
> trial by big margins. The proponents of the legislation take big risks if
> the public finds out what they are doing."
>
> In my practice, I see the huge
> harms<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.patrickmalonelaw.com_what-2Dwe-2Ddo_medical-2Dmalpractice_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=uuWA39aqPOzcDCrGAJ-IJVjoxppp9DQtu-1QyVQJNvE&e=>
> that patients can suffer while seeking medical services, and they certainly
> don't need more obstacles or constraints as they seek justice and the often
> major economic support they will need, sometimes for a lifetime. Voters who
> might be interested in exercising their democratic rights to protest with
> their elected officials this attack on patients and consumer rights can
> refer to the pack of bills, including: HR1215 (affecting patient rights) and
> the others HR720, HR725, HR732, HR906, HR985. More information on each can
> be obtained through the Center for Justice & Democracy (click
> here<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__centerjd.org_content_letters-2Dopposing-2Dsix-2Dus-2Dhouse-2Danti-2Dcivil-2Djustice-2Dbills&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=IEvR5nCzbs-_8Cw8xjj4tcvC7F6eTvQXHm-tByKY110&e=>),
> on the House Judiciary Committee
> site<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__judiciary.house.gov_legislative-2Daction_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=4sbZP-i6J-5uxoO8xayaG-OjhoU4_H56pZLeqBeK_rQ&e=>,
> though please note that Republicans control material posted there.
>
> From:
>
>
> http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/gop-campaigning-to-strip-patients-of-47634/<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__www.jdsupra.com_legalnews_gop-2Dcampaigning-2Dto-2Dstrip-2Dpatients-2Dof-2D47634_&d=DwMFaQ&c=cBOA5YEoZuz9KdLvh38YxdrPtfJt83ckXekfBgq5xB0&r=CK8oOj7-JYZnTDmB5orNTVZXar6NrsnGtGHfQ5m79Do&m=mzCJCJGS84942f-VXag0IXzQAJe2Q3eZxaHrONTAfgs&s=QnvIZhBWBJ8Zx1NQEnASSniZv553hmqXbV1doaZaXYM&e=>
>
>
>
>
>
>
Friday, March 10, 2017
Thursday, March 9, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Is This Really My Generation?
Before you melt down in shame, Bob. ask yourself one question: "What
caused the Boomers to become what they are?"
The author said: "Boomers weren't genetically predestined to be
dysfunctional; they were conditioned to be."
He then took a wrong turn and began heaping the blame onto the
Boomers. But he was right to say that the dis functional condition
was...well, conditioned.
So does he really believe that the Boomers set out to become dis
functional all by themselves? Or could it be that they were "herded"
along the road to dis functionality. The author writes as if all
boomers are affected by this condition. Hold on! What about those
Boomers born within the Ruling Class...the 1%ers?
When we step back and start from a position that we have always had an
Oligarchy, and that most of us are not now, nor were we ever members
of that elite body, then we can speculate as to who is behind this
conditioning. But blaming the victim is not going to gain us
anything. Nor is blaming "government", or even the Republican or
Democratic Parties. Who are we supporting in a life style that we,
ourselves will never enjoy? Who do we defend when we send drones off
around the globe, killing...murdering people who we've never met, and
who have no idea why they are being murdered. Is it "us" we are
making safe? Or is it the interests of the Oligarchy that is the
recipient of our sacrifices...the blood of our sons and daughters and
fathers and mothers who are pressed into "the Service of their
Country"?
No Bob, don't blame your generation for that which has been forced
upon you. The Boomers are the victims. But they do not need to
remain under the conditioning of the Oligarchy. Once they begin to
wake up and realize that they have been led down this road by the Pied
Pipers of the Ruling Class, they will begin to stir and to rise up.
But just a word of warning, drones that can be sent across the oceans
can also be pointed at the Homeland.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/8/17, Bob Hachey <bhachey@verizon.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The sad answer to my question in the subject line is a shameful yes. IMHO,
> this article accurately describes how baby boomers, Democrats and
> Republicans alike, have driven America into the ground. When I first began
> reading this thing, I was hoping that I could come up with good arguments
> against this author's well-reasoned points but I cannot. I look forward to
> his book which I intend to read. (see end of article.
>
> Bob Hachey
>
>
>
> How the baby boomers destroyed everything
>
>
>
> By Bruce Cannon GibneyFebruary 26, 2017
>
>
>
> Even before the election, Americans were asking just how we got here - to
> this sullen moment of national reckoning. Since November, the autopsy has
> dragged
>
> on so long it seems there could be nothing left to dissect. But the search
> continues, because no truly satisfying answer has yet been offered.
> Deplorables,
>
> deportables, economic malaise, rural resentment, coastal hauteur whatever -
> these are just symptoms. The root illness remains undiagnosed, but here it
>
> is: the baby boomers, that vast generation of Americans born in the first
> two decades after World War II. The body politic rests on the slab because
> boomers
>
> put it there, because decades of boomerism produced the problems and
> disaffection of which 2016 was merely the latest expression.
>
>
>
> It's a shocking hypothesis, but then again, America has suffered a shocking
> decline. In 1971, Alan Shepard was playing golf on the moon. Today, America
>
> can't put a man into orbit (or, allegedly,
>
> the Oval Office)
>
> without Russian assistance. Something changed, and that something was the
> boomers and the sociopathic agenda they emplaced.
>
>
>
> My indictment of boomers may seem overbroad, but the thesis is quite
> specific: the unusual prevalence of sociopathy in an unusually large
> generation. How
>
> does that disorder manifest? Improvidence is reflected in low levels of
>
> savings
>
> and high levels of
>
> bankruptcy.
>
> Deceit shows up as a distaste for facts, a subject on display in everything
> from Enron's quarterly reports to daily press briefings. Interpersonal
> failures
>
> and unbridled hostility appeared in unusually high levels of divorce and
> crime from the 1970s to early 1990s. These problems expressed themselves at
> generationally
>
> unique levels in boomers, to a greater extent than in boomers' parents or
> children at comparable ages. (My forthcoming book lays out all these data
> in
>
> detail.)
>
>
>
> Boomers weren't genetically predestined to be dysfunctional; they were
> conditioned to be. They were the first generation to be raised
> permissively,
> the
>
> first reared on television and subject to its developmental harms, and the
> only living group raised in an era of seemingly effortless prosperity. Can
> too
>
> much license, TV, and unearned wealth distort personalities? May I suggest
> looking south toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
>
>
>
> The boomers' sociopathic inclinations might be of sociological, but not
> political, interest except for one fact: Boomers have a lot of voting
> power.
> Although
>
> boomers
>
> peaked at just over half the voting age population in the early 1980s,
>
> their influence kept growing as they voted more frequently, unleashed a
> flood of political money, and elected co-generationalists, all in reckless
> pursuit
>
> of the sociopathic agenda. In the 1970s, the older establishment had
> already
> begun bending to boomer power, though not always cravenly enough, a problem
>
> boomers resolved by becoming the establishment itself. Boomers' notable
> early achievement was electing Bill Clinton, who began the long saga that
> meandered
>
> through Bush II and ends - well, who knows how exactly it will end?
>
>
>
> What happened in the White House happened everywhere else. By 1994, boomers
> held a majority of House seats, a proportion that peaked at 79 percent in
> 2008
>
> and remains a still formidable 69 percent. The rest of government went the
> same way: Boomers make up 86 percent of governors, about three-quarters of
> the
>
> proposed Cabinet, and much of the judiciary and bureaucracy. Except for
> youthful Silicon Valley, the private sector also fell into boomer hands
> decades
>
> ago and remains there.
>
>
>
> In Pa., boomers see the American Dream slipping away
>
>
>
> Many from Butler High School's class of 1976 are now weary, worn, or
> furious. For some, those feelings are driving their votes.
>
>
>
> Baby boomers and their parents' friends
>
>
>
> By the late 1990s, as boomerism really expressed itself, disasters arrived:
> financial scandals, economic infirmities, mounting debt, unaddressed
> climate
>
> change, a growing entitlements crisis, and more. Since it was politically
> untenable to locate blame in obvious places, other explanations were
> manufactured
>
> for the nation's woes. (Immigrants!) Especially on the coasts, other
> explanations have been long suspected, such as the predations of a swollen
> GOP. Not
>
> implausible, but then you have to ask where the swelling comes from, and
> that circles back to boomers who, despite their hippie reputation, are net
> Republican.
>
>
>
> Anyway, the boomers' retrograde preferences mattered more than nominal
> political affiliation, pushing even modern Democrats to the
>
> right of Richard Nixon
>
> on many matters. After all, it wasn't Nixon, or even Ronald Reagan, who
> planted so many of the noxious seeds that blossom now; it was Clinton, the
> ur-boomer
>
> progressive. The "end of welfare as we know it"?
>
> Clinton.
>
> Berserk policies on crime, immigration, gays, deregulation, and
> surveillance
> that bloated into today's prison state, travel bans, transgender showdowns,
>
> and financial crises? Clinton again. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
> Penalty Act,
>
> Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,
>
> Defense of Marriage Act,
>
> repeal of
>
> Glass-Steagall,
>
> etc.? Clinton provided the themes; Bush II and Donald Trump, the
> variations;
> and other boomers, the orchestra and applause.
>
>
>
> Barack Obama has been conspicuously absent, because my argument is as much
> cultural as chronological. While birth makes Obama a late boomer, his
> upbringing
>
> left him distant - geographically and socially - from the boomer
> mainstream.
> Not coincidentally, No Drama Obama was the most sober thing about American
>
> politics in 25 years. But he was limited to moderating inherited
> catastrophes - and prevented from pursuing policies that might benefit
> people of lesser
>
> means, whiteness, and age than the boomers he faced in Congress.
>
>
>
> Surely, by 2016, it was time for a thorough reconsideration of the dogmas
> that caused so much harm, but the last election hardly featured real policy
> discussion.
>
> So what if Social Security faces partial insolvency after
>
> 2034,
>
> or that climate change has scientists and generals fretting for the world
> circa 2040? By then, the median boomer will be dead. The only germane issue
> for
>
> the aging, unempathetic sociopath was blocking reform of senior
> entitlements. Youths like Paul Ryan, with his irksome calculations and
> future focus, couldn't
>
> be trusted on this issue. But boomers Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,
> whatever their other infirmities, pledged
>
> loyalty
>
> on this crucial item.
>
>
>
> I don't imply that Clinton and Trump were otherwise equivalent. They
> weren't. Nor do I assert that all of their co-generationalists are
> sociopaths. They
>
> aren't. But I don't shrink from arguing that an unusually large fraction of
> boomers behaves sociopathically, with the power to realize their agenda.
> The
>
> Koch brothers can't carry all the blame: The 1 percent is, by definition,
> just 1 percent, unable to dictate national policy on its own. A giant
> generation
>
> of boomers can and does, and their overriding imperative is to consume at
> someone else's expense. To say they succeeded is to understate.
>
>
>
> The simplicity of the boomer agenda amplified the considerable power of
> boomer votes, while clarifying otherwise complex issues, especially of
> benefits
>
> and taxes. Benefits, at least for the boomer middle class, were to be
> expanded - period. Taxes, for the same group, would be cut or reallocated.
> This dynamic
>
> illuminates otherwise inexplicable deviations from orthodoxy practiced by a
> machine supposedly seized by ideological gridlock. It explains why Reagan
> lowered
>
> taxes on income while raising them on capital gains (when boomers had
> salaries but not portfolios), why Bill Clinton lowered taxes on houses and
> stocks
>
> (when boomers owned those in quantity), and why Bush II cut taxes with
> unseemly attention lavished on the "death tax" (just as the boomers'
> parents
> neared
>
> expiration) while embracing
>
> the largest expansion in welfare since the 1960s
>
> (Medicare Part D, in time to benefit aging boomers). The machine works, at
> least from the boomer perspective.
>
>
>
> All these giveaways had consequences. The rich got richer, as we know, but
> the rich are old. That is, they're boomers. The patterns of general boomer
> gains
>
> mirrored those of the very wealthy. From 1989 to 2013, wealth gaps between
> older and younger households grew in the same way as those between the top
> 5
>
> percent and the bottom 95 percent. Today's seniors (boomers) are much
> wealthier relative to the present young than the seniors of the 1980s were
> to then-young
>
> boomers. All those tax breaks, bailouts, easy money, deregulation, and the
> bubbles they spawned supported that boomer wealth accumulation while
> shifting
>
> the true costs to the future, to the young.
>
>
>
> Still, no amount of tax reallocation could keep the government together and
> goodies flowing, so boomers tolerated astounding debt expansion while
> chopping
>
> other parts of the budget. Gross national debt,
>
> 35 percent of GDP
>
> when the boomers came of age, is now
>
> 105 percent,
>
> a peacetime record expanding 3 percent annually, forever. But this
> understates the problem, because not only does the family farm have a giant
> mortgage,
>
> it also desperately needs repair and modernization.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, boomers show no appetite for maintaining the assets their
> parents accumulated. Public higher education, nearly free for boomers, has
> become
>
> dauntingly expensive. Infrastructure is neither built nor maintained, and
> not even "responsible" boomers take this seriously. It was then-candidates
> John
>
> McCain and Hillary Clinton, those paragons of boomer probity, who proposed
> a
>
>
> gas-tax holiday
>
> in 2008, the
>
> year the Highway Trust Fund went bust.
>
> Federal
>
> research and development funding
>
> also suffered, with dispiriting consequences for the future. Smartphones
> may
> be fairly recent, but their core technologies were developed with
> government
>
> money long ago. Enjoy your iPhone now, because your iCopter and iKidney
> will
> be indefinitely delayed.
>
>
>
> The consequences of boomer overconsumption, underinvestment, and appetite
> for risk reveal themselves every time a bridge or bank collapses, but can
> be
>
> summarized in America's prolonged economic mediocrity. Finding decent
> growth
> requires stretching all the way back to the 1990s, and even so, the 1990s
>
> barely edged out 1970s' squalor on a per capita GDP basis. Thanks to boomer
> policies, the new normal is 1.6 percent real growth, well below the 2.5 to
>
> 3.5 percent rates prevailing from the 1950s to the 1980s. For the young,
> the
> price will be incomes 30 percent to 50 percent lower than they could have
>
> been.
>
>
>
> When problems grow large, boomers resort to deceit, and the huge
> degradation
> of truth suggests just how bad things have gotten. Whether it be
> misrepresentations
>
> by Worldcom, Lehman Brothers, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, or General
> Michael Flynn, boomer culture has wallowed in duplicity for decades.
> Untruths are
>
> emitted, others bear the consequences, and this has been the case for
> decades. The dubious draft deferments of the 1960s became the
> off-balance-sheet obligations
>
> of the 1990s, ginned-up weapons of mass destruction of the 2000s, and
> today's phantom terrorism in Bowling Green and Sweden. "Alternative facts"
> are just
>
> the most recent consequences of the boomers' declaration of epistemic
> bankruptcy.
>
>
>
> If Trump has given America one gift, it's a free hand to condemn the
> generation of which he is the impeachable id. Henceforth, let us expect no
> more from
>
> people who achieved so little, who have such small interest in the future.
> Let us dispense with ideas that aging flower children have substantial
> claims
>
> on goodness, as boomers liberal and conservative alike engaged in
> warrantless wiretapping, extrajudicial assassinations, gratuitous assaults
> on the dignity
>
> of minorities, mass disenfranchisement, the erection of a vast and useless
> penal state, and policies of cavalier disregard. Let us turn boomers out
> from
>
> offices high, corner, and otherwise, and keenly assess boomers'
> contributions to society against their demands for interminable subsidy,
> finding some reasonable
>
> settlement. And let us do it soon.
>
>
>
> Bruce Cannon Gibney is a venture capitalist and writer and the author of
> the
> forthcoming book "
>
> A Generation of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America
>
>
>
> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-every
> thing/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos5
>
>
caused the Boomers to become what they are?"
The author said: "Boomers weren't genetically predestined to be
dysfunctional; they were conditioned to be."
He then took a wrong turn and began heaping the blame onto the
Boomers. But he was right to say that the dis functional condition
was...well, conditioned.
So does he really believe that the Boomers set out to become dis
functional all by themselves? Or could it be that they were "herded"
along the road to dis functionality. The author writes as if all
boomers are affected by this condition. Hold on! What about those
Boomers born within the Ruling Class...the 1%ers?
When we step back and start from a position that we have always had an
Oligarchy, and that most of us are not now, nor were we ever members
of that elite body, then we can speculate as to who is behind this
conditioning. But blaming the victim is not going to gain us
anything. Nor is blaming "government", or even the Republican or
Democratic Parties. Who are we supporting in a life style that we,
ourselves will never enjoy? Who do we defend when we send drones off
around the globe, killing...murdering people who we've never met, and
who have no idea why they are being murdered. Is it "us" we are
making safe? Or is it the interests of the Oligarchy that is the
recipient of our sacrifices...the blood of our sons and daughters and
fathers and mothers who are pressed into "the Service of their
Country"?
No Bob, don't blame your generation for that which has been forced
upon you. The Boomers are the victims. But they do not need to
remain under the conditioning of the Oligarchy. Once they begin to
wake up and realize that they have been led down this road by the Pied
Pipers of the Ruling Class, they will begin to stir and to rise up.
But just a word of warning, drones that can be sent across the oceans
can also be pointed at the Homeland.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/8/17, Bob Hachey <bhachey@verizon.net> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> The sad answer to my question in the subject line is a shameful yes. IMHO,
> this article accurately describes how baby boomers, Democrats and
> Republicans alike, have driven America into the ground. When I first began
> reading this thing, I was hoping that I could come up with good arguments
> against this author's well-reasoned points but I cannot. I look forward to
> his book which I intend to read. (see end of article.
>
> Bob Hachey
>
>
>
> How the baby boomers destroyed everything
>
>
>
> By Bruce Cannon GibneyFebruary 26, 2017
>
>
>
> Even before the election, Americans were asking just how we got here - to
> this sullen moment of national reckoning. Since November, the autopsy has
> dragged
>
> on so long it seems there could be nothing left to dissect. But the search
> continues, because no truly satisfying answer has yet been offered.
> Deplorables,
>
> deportables, economic malaise, rural resentment, coastal hauteur whatever -
> these are just symptoms. The root illness remains undiagnosed, but here it
>
> is: the baby boomers, that vast generation of Americans born in the first
> two decades after World War II. The body politic rests on the slab because
> boomers
>
> put it there, because decades of boomerism produced the problems and
> disaffection of which 2016 was merely the latest expression.
>
>
>
> It's a shocking hypothesis, but then again, America has suffered a shocking
> decline. In 1971, Alan Shepard was playing golf on the moon. Today, America
>
> can't put a man into orbit (or, allegedly,
>
> the Oval Office)
>
> without Russian assistance. Something changed, and that something was the
> boomers and the sociopathic agenda they emplaced.
>
>
>
> My indictment of boomers may seem overbroad, but the thesis is quite
> specific: the unusual prevalence of sociopathy in an unusually large
> generation. How
>
> does that disorder manifest? Improvidence is reflected in low levels of
>
> savings
>
> and high levels of
>
> bankruptcy.
>
> Deceit shows up as a distaste for facts, a subject on display in everything
> from Enron's quarterly reports to daily press briefings. Interpersonal
> failures
>
> and unbridled hostility appeared in unusually high levels of divorce and
> crime from the 1970s to early 1990s. These problems expressed themselves at
> generationally
>
> unique levels in boomers, to a greater extent than in boomers' parents or
> children at comparable ages. (My forthcoming book lays out all these data
> in
>
> detail.)
>
>
>
> Boomers weren't genetically predestined to be dysfunctional; they were
> conditioned to be. They were the first generation to be raised
> permissively,
> the
>
> first reared on television and subject to its developmental harms, and the
> only living group raised in an era of seemingly effortless prosperity. Can
> too
>
> much license, TV, and unearned wealth distort personalities? May I suggest
> looking south toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
>
>
>
> The boomers' sociopathic inclinations might be of sociological, but not
> political, interest except for one fact: Boomers have a lot of voting
> power.
> Although
>
> boomers
>
> peaked at just over half the voting age population in the early 1980s,
>
> their influence kept growing as they voted more frequently, unleashed a
> flood of political money, and elected co-generationalists, all in reckless
> pursuit
>
> of the sociopathic agenda. In the 1970s, the older establishment had
> already
> begun bending to boomer power, though not always cravenly enough, a problem
>
> boomers resolved by becoming the establishment itself. Boomers' notable
> early achievement was electing Bill Clinton, who began the long saga that
> meandered
>
> through Bush II and ends - well, who knows how exactly it will end?
>
>
>
> What happened in the White House happened everywhere else. By 1994, boomers
> held a majority of House seats, a proportion that peaked at 79 percent in
> 2008
>
> and remains a still formidable 69 percent. The rest of government went the
> same way: Boomers make up 86 percent of governors, about three-quarters of
> the
>
> proposed Cabinet, and much of the judiciary and bureaucracy. Except for
> youthful Silicon Valley, the private sector also fell into boomer hands
> decades
>
> ago and remains there.
>
>
>
> In Pa., boomers see the American Dream slipping away
>
>
>
> Many from Butler High School's class of 1976 are now weary, worn, or
> furious. For some, those feelings are driving their votes.
>
>
>
> Baby boomers and their parents' friends
>
>
>
> By the late 1990s, as boomerism really expressed itself, disasters arrived:
> financial scandals, economic infirmities, mounting debt, unaddressed
> climate
>
> change, a growing entitlements crisis, and more. Since it was politically
> untenable to locate blame in obvious places, other explanations were
> manufactured
>
> for the nation's woes. (Immigrants!) Especially on the coasts, other
> explanations have been long suspected, such as the predations of a swollen
> GOP. Not
>
> implausible, but then you have to ask where the swelling comes from, and
> that circles back to boomers who, despite their hippie reputation, are net
> Republican.
>
>
>
> Anyway, the boomers' retrograde preferences mattered more than nominal
> political affiliation, pushing even modern Democrats to the
>
> right of Richard Nixon
>
> on many matters. After all, it wasn't Nixon, or even Ronald Reagan, who
> planted so many of the noxious seeds that blossom now; it was Clinton, the
> ur-boomer
>
> progressive. The "end of welfare as we know it"?
>
> Clinton.
>
> Berserk policies on crime, immigration, gays, deregulation, and
> surveillance
> that bloated into today's prison state, travel bans, transgender showdowns,
>
> and financial crises? Clinton again. The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
> Penalty Act,
>
> Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act,
>
> Defense of Marriage Act,
>
> repeal of
>
> Glass-Steagall,
>
> etc.? Clinton provided the themes; Bush II and Donald Trump, the
> variations;
> and other boomers, the orchestra and applause.
>
>
>
> Barack Obama has been conspicuously absent, because my argument is as much
> cultural as chronological. While birth makes Obama a late boomer, his
> upbringing
>
> left him distant - geographically and socially - from the boomer
> mainstream.
> Not coincidentally, No Drama Obama was the most sober thing about American
>
> politics in 25 years. But he was limited to moderating inherited
> catastrophes - and prevented from pursuing policies that might benefit
> people of lesser
>
> means, whiteness, and age than the boomers he faced in Congress.
>
>
>
> Surely, by 2016, it was time for a thorough reconsideration of the dogmas
> that caused so much harm, but the last election hardly featured real policy
> discussion.
>
> So what if Social Security faces partial insolvency after
>
> 2034,
>
> or that climate change has scientists and generals fretting for the world
> circa 2040? By then, the median boomer will be dead. The only germane issue
> for
>
> the aging, unempathetic sociopath was blocking reform of senior
> entitlements. Youths like Paul Ryan, with his irksome calculations and
> future focus, couldn't
>
> be trusted on this issue. But boomers Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton,
> whatever their other infirmities, pledged
>
> loyalty
>
> on this crucial item.
>
>
>
> I don't imply that Clinton and Trump were otherwise equivalent. They
> weren't. Nor do I assert that all of their co-generationalists are
> sociopaths. They
>
> aren't. But I don't shrink from arguing that an unusually large fraction of
> boomers behaves sociopathically, with the power to realize their agenda.
> The
>
> Koch brothers can't carry all the blame: The 1 percent is, by definition,
> just 1 percent, unable to dictate national policy on its own. A giant
> generation
>
> of boomers can and does, and their overriding imperative is to consume at
> someone else's expense. To say they succeeded is to understate.
>
>
>
> The simplicity of the boomer agenda amplified the considerable power of
> boomer votes, while clarifying otherwise complex issues, especially of
> benefits
>
> and taxes. Benefits, at least for the boomer middle class, were to be
> expanded - period. Taxes, for the same group, would be cut or reallocated.
> This dynamic
>
> illuminates otherwise inexplicable deviations from orthodoxy practiced by a
> machine supposedly seized by ideological gridlock. It explains why Reagan
> lowered
>
> taxes on income while raising them on capital gains (when boomers had
> salaries but not portfolios), why Bill Clinton lowered taxes on houses and
> stocks
>
> (when boomers owned those in quantity), and why Bush II cut taxes with
> unseemly attention lavished on the "death tax" (just as the boomers'
> parents
> neared
>
> expiration) while embracing
>
> the largest expansion in welfare since the 1960s
>
> (Medicare Part D, in time to benefit aging boomers). The machine works, at
> least from the boomer perspective.
>
>
>
> All these giveaways had consequences. The rich got richer, as we know, but
> the rich are old. That is, they're boomers. The patterns of general boomer
> gains
>
> mirrored those of the very wealthy. From 1989 to 2013, wealth gaps between
> older and younger households grew in the same way as those between the top
> 5
>
> percent and the bottom 95 percent. Today's seniors (boomers) are much
> wealthier relative to the present young than the seniors of the 1980s were
> to then-young
>
> boomers. All those tax breaks, bailouts, easy money, deregulation, and the
> bubbles they spawned supported that boomer wealth accumulation while
> shifting
>
> the true costs to the future, to the young.
>
>
>
> Still, no amount of tax reallocation could keep the government together and
> goodies flowing, so boomers tolerated astounding debt expansion while
> chopping
>
> other parts of the budget. Gross national debt,
>
> 35 percent of GDP
>
> when the boomers came of age, is now
>
> 105 percent,
>
> a peacetime record expanding 3 percent annually, forever. But this
> understates the problem, because not only does the family farm have a giant
> mortgage,
>
> it also desperately needs repair and modernization.
>
>
>
> Unfortunately, boomers show no appetite for maintaining the assets their
> parents accumulated. Public higher education, nearly free for boomers, has
> become
>
> dauntingly expensive. Infrastructure is neither built nor maintained, and
> not even "responsible" boomers take this seriously. It was then-candidates
> John
>
> McCain and Hillary Clinton, those paragons of boomer probity, who proposed
> a
>
>
> gas-tax holiday
>
> in 2008, the
>
> year the Highway Trust Fund went bust.
>
> Federal
>
> research and development funding
>
> also suffered, with dispiriting consequences for the future. Smartphones
> may
> be fairly recent, but their core technologies were developed with
> government
>
> money long ago. Enjoy your iPhone now, because your iCopter and iKidney
> will
> be indefinitely delayed.
>
>
>
> The consequences of boomer overconsumption, underinvestment, and appetite
> for risk reveal themselves every time a bridge or bank collapses, but can
> be
>
> summarized in America's prolonged economic mediocrity. Finding decent
> growth
> requires stretching all the way back to the 1990s, and even so, the 1990s
>
> barely edged out 1970s' squalor on a per capita GDP basis. Thanks to boomer
> policies, the new normal is 1.6 percent real growth, well below the 2.5 to
>
> 3.5 percent rates prevailing from the 1950s to the 1980s. For the young,
> the
> price will be incomes 30 percent to 50 percent lower than they could have
>
> been.
>
>
>
> When problems grow large, boomers resort to deceit, and the huge
> degradation
> of truth suggests just how bad things have gotten. Whether it be
> misrepresentations
>
> by Worldcom, Lehman Brothers, Bill Clinton, Newt Gingrich, or General
> Michael Flynn, boomer culture has wallowed in duplicity for decades.
> Untruths are
>
> emitted, others bear the consequences, and this has been the case for
> decades. The dubious draft deferments of the 1960s became the
> off-balance-sheet obligations
>
> of the 1990s, ginned-up weapons of mass destruction of the 2000s, and
> today's phantom terrorism in Bowling Green and Sweden. "Alternative facts"
> are just
>
> the most recent consequences of the boomers' declaration of epistemic
> bankruptcy.
>
>
>
> If Trump has given America one gift, it's a free hand to condemn the
> generation of which he is the impeachable id. Henceforth, let us expect no
> more from
>
> people who achieved so little, who have such small interest in the future.
> Let us dispense with ideas that aging flower children have substantial
> claims
>
> on goodness, as boomers liberal and conservative alike engaged in
> warrantless wiretapping, extrajudicial assassinations, gratuitous assaults
> on the dignity
>
> of minorities, mass disenfranchisement, the erection of a vast and useless
> penal state, and policies of cavalier disregard. Let us turn boomers out
> from
>
> offices high, corner, and otherwise, and keenly assess boomers'
> contributions to society against their demands for interminable subsidy,
> finding some reasonable
>
> settlement. And let us do it soon.
>
>
>
> Bruce Cannon Gibney is a venture capitalist and writer and the author of
> the
> forthcoming book "
>
> A Generation of Sociopaths: How The Baby Boomers Betrayed America
>
>
>
> http://www.bostonglobe.com/ideas/2017/02/26/how-baby-boomers-destroyed-every
> thing/lVB9eG5mATw3wxo6XmDZFL/story.html?p1=Article_Recommended_ReadMore_Pos5
>
>
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed
Since I can't find my original response, here's a shorter version.
Carl
When I was about six years old my Grandma Ludwig took me by the hand
and we walked out to the barn and into the chicken house. It was the
summer of 1941, a clear, hot day in Spokane Valley. Grandma plucked
up a big fat old Hen and we walked outside with that hen kicking and
squawking. She wrestled it down with its neck stretched across a low,
flat chopping block next to the garden, and with a quick, practiced
move, she brought her little hatchet down, separating the hen's head
from the rest of the hen. The body of that big old fat hen jumped up
and began running about in all directions, like a drunk sailor,
flapping its wings and bouncing off the poles that held up the bush
beans. Just as suddenly, it flopped over and lay still.
Today, when I watch the crazy dashing about by the out of control
Democrats, and the equally insane behavior of the Republicans, trying
to contain the wild antics of the Trumpster, I am reminded of that big
fat old hen. If I knew then what I think I know today, I would have
named that big fat old hen, Democrat.
If it weren't such a serious matter, I'd say that the goings on today
would make a really funny Broadway Comedy. Maybe a Musical. Tunes
like, "March of the Trumpsters", or "Where have all the sane folk
gone?" We would all leave the theater, still holding our bellies and
giggling now and again. But unfortunately, what is happening before
our very eyes, is not a theatrical performance. It's the real deal.
And what it is, is the death Toll of democracy. But watch for the
coming Feature. It's entitled, The End of Humanity.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/7/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Glenn Greenwald
> Unofficial Sources
>
>
> © First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ⎕
>
>
>
>
> Photo: Andres Leighton/AP
>
>
> Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed
>
>
>
>
> Glenn Greenwald
>
>
>
>
>
> March 6 2017, 8:37 a.m.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> One of the most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the
> Democrats' fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of
> Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported
> that "the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the
> new Republican platform won't call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight
> Russian and rebel forces."
>
> Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that
> Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and
> corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. Democratic
> Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations
> Committee, spoke for many in his party when he lambasted the RNC change in a
> July letter to the New York Times, castigating it as "dangerous thinking"
> that shows Trump is controlled, or at least manipulated, by the Kremlin.
> Democrats resurrected this line of attack this weekend when Trump advisers
> acknowledged that campaign officials were behind the platform change.
>
> This attempt to equate Trump's opposition to arming Ukraine with some sort
> of treasonous allegiance to Putin masks a rather critical fact: namely, that
> the refusal to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons was one of Barack Obama's
> most steadfastly held policies. The original Post article that reported the
> RNC platform change noted this explicitly:
>
>
> Of course, Trump is not the only politician to oppose sending lethal weapons
> to Ukraine. President Obama decided not to authorize it, despite
> recommendations to do so from his top Europe officials in the State
> Department and the military.
>
> Early media reports about this controversy from outlets such as NPR also
> noted the irony at the heart of this debate: namely, that arming Ukraine was
> the long-time desire of hawks in the GOP such as John McCain, Lindsey Graham
> and Marco Rubio, but the Obama White House categorically resisted those
> pressures:
>
>
> Republicans in Congress have approved providing arms to the Ukrainian
> government but the White House has resisted, saying that it would only
> encourage more bloodshed.
>
> It's a rare Obama administration policy that the Trump campaign seems to
> agree with.
>
> Indeed, the GOP ultimately joined with the hawkish wing of the Democratic
> Party to demand that Obama provide Ukraine with lethal weapons to fight
> Russia, but Obama steadfastly refused. As the New York Times reported in
> March, 2015, "President Obama is coming under increasing pressure from both
> parties and more officials inside his own government to send arms to the
> country. But he remains unconvinced that they would help." When Obama kept
> refusing, leaders of the two parties threatened to enact legislation forcing
> Obama to arm Ukraine.
>
>
> The general Russia approach that Democrats now routinely depict as
> treasonous – avoiding confrontation with and even accommodating Russian
> interests, not just in Ukraine but also in Syria – was one of the defining
> traits of Obama's foreign policy. This fact shouldn't be overstated: Obama
> engaged in provocative acts such as moves to further expand NATO, non-lethal
> aid to Ukraine, and deploying "missile defense" weaponry in Romania. But he
> rejected most calls to confront Russia. That is one of the primary reasons
> the "foreign policy elite" – which, recall, Obama came into office
> denouncing and vowing to repudiate – was so dissatisfied with his
> presidency.
>
> A new, long article by Politico foreign affairs correspondent Susan Glasser
> – on the war being waged against Trump by Washington's "foreign policy
> elite" – makes this point very potently. Say what you will about Politico,
> but one thing they are very adept at doing is giving voice to cowardly
> Washington insiders by accommodating their cowardice and thus routinely
> granting them anonymity to express themselves. As journalistically dubious
> as it is to shield the world's most powerful people with anonymity, this
> practice sometimes ends up revealing what careerist denizens of Washington
> power really think but are too scared to say. Glasser's article, which
> largely consists of conveying the views of anonymous high-level Obama
> officials, contains this remarkable passage:
>
>
> In other words, Democrats are now waging war on, and are depicting as
> treasonous, one of Barack Obama's central and most steadfastly held foreign
> policy positions, one that he clung to despite attacks from leading members
> of both parties as well as the DC National Security Community. That's not
> Noam Chomsky drawing that comparison; it's an Obama appointee.
>
> The destructive bipartisan Foreign Policy Community was furious with Obama
> for not confronting Russia more, and is now furious with Trump for the same
> reason (though they certainly loath and fear Trump for other reasons,
> including the threat they believe he poses to U.S. imperial management
> through a combination of ineptitude, instability, toxic PR, naked rather
> than prettified savagery, and ideology; Glasser writes: "'Everything I've
> worked for for two decades is being destroyed,' a senior Republican told
> me").
>
>
>
> All of this demonstrates how fundamental a shift has taken place as a result
> of the Democrats' election-related fixation on The Grave Russian Threat. To
> see how severe the shift is, just look at this new polling data from CNN
> this morning that shows Republicans and Democrats doing a complete reversal
> on Russia in the span of eight months:
>
>
> The Democrats' obsession with Russia has not just led them to want
> investigations into allegations of hacking and (thus far evidence-free)
> suspicions of Trump campaign collusion – investigations which everyone
> should want. It's done far more than that: it's turned them into
> increasingly maniacal and militaristic hawks – dangerous ones – when it
> comes to confronting the only nation with a larger nuclear stockpile than
> the U.S., an arsenal accompanied by a sense of fear, if not outright
> encirclement, from NATO expansion.
>
> Put another way, establishment Democrats – with a largely political impetus
> but now as a matter of conviction – have completely abandoned Obama's
> accommodationist approach to Russia and have fully embraced the belligerent,
> hawkish mentality of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bill Kristol, the CIA and
> Evan McMullin. It should thus come as no surprise that a bill proposed by
> supreme warmonger Lindsey Graham to bar Trump from removing sanctions
> against Russia has more Democratic co-sponsors than Republican ones.
>
> This is why it's so notable that Democrats, in the name of "resistance,"
> have aligned with neocons, CIA operatives and former Bush officials: not
> because coalitions should be avoided with the ideologically impure, but
> because it reveals much about the political and policy mindset they've
> adopted in the name of stopping Trump. They're not "resisting" Trump from
> the left or with populist appeals – by, for instance, devoting themselves to
> protection of Wall Street and environmental regulations under attack, or
> supporting the revocation of jobs-killing free trade agreements, or
> demanding that Yemini civilians not be massacred.
>
> Instead, they're attacking him on the grounds of insufficient nationalism,
> militarism, and aggression: equating a desire to avoid confrontation with
> Moscow as a form of treason (just like they did when they were the leading
> Cold Warriors). This is why they're finding such common cause with the
> nation's most bloodthirsty militarists – not because it's an alliance of
> convenience but rather one of shared convictions (indeed, long before Trump,
> neocons were planning a re-alignment with Democrats under a Clinton
> presidency). And the most ironic – and over-looked – aspect of this whole
> volatile spectacle is how much Democrats have to repudiate and demonize one
> of Obama's core foreign policy legacies while pretending that they're not
> doing that.
>
>
>
>
>
Carl
When I was about six years old my Grandma Ludwig took me by the hand
and we walked out to the barn and into the chicken house. It was the
summer of 1941, a clear, hot day in Spokane Valley. Grandma plucked
up a big fat old Hen and we walked outside with that hen kicking and
squawking. She wrestled it down with its neck stretched across a low,
flat chopping block next to the garden, and with a quick, practiced
move, she brought her little hatchet down, separating the hen's head
from the rest of the hen. The body of that big old fat hen jumped up
and began running about in all directions, like a drunk sailor,
flapping its wings and bouncing off the poles that held up the bush
beans. Just as suddenly, it flopped over and lay still.
Today, when I watch the crazy dashing about by the out of control
Democrats, and the equally insane behavior of the Republicans, trying
to contain the wild antics of the Trumpster, I am reminded of that big
fat old hen. If I knew then what I think I know today, I would have
named that big fat old hen, Democrat.
If it weren't such a serious matter, I'd say that the goings on today
would make a really funny Broadway Comedy. Maybe a Musical. Tunes
like, "March of the Trumpsters", or "Where have all the sane folk
gone?" We would all leave the theater, still holding our bellies and
giggling now and again. But unfortunately, what is happening before
our very eyes, is not a theatrical performance. It's the real deal.
And what it is, is the death Toll of democracy. But watch for the
coming Feature. It's entitled, The End of Humanity.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/7/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@optonline.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Glenn Greenwald
> Unofficial Sources
>
>
> © First Look Media. All rights reservedTerms of use
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> ⎕
>
>
>
>
> Photo: Andres Leighton/AP
>
>
> Democrats Now Demonize the Same Russia Policies that Obama Long Championed
>
>
>
>
> Glenn Greenwald
>
>
>
>
>
> March 6 2017, 8:37 a.m.
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> One of the most bizarre aspects of the all-consuming Russia frenzy is the
> Democrats' fixation on changes to the RNC platform concerning U.S. arming of
> Ukraine. The controversy began in July when the Washington Post reported
> that "the Trump campaign worked behind the scenes last week to make sure the
> new Republican platform won't call for giving weapons to Ukraine to fight
> Russian and rebel forces."
>
> Ever since then, Democrats have used this language change as evidence that
> Trump and his key advisers have sinister connections to Russians and
> corruptly do their bidding at the expense of American interests. Democratic
> Senator Ben Cardin, the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations
> Committee, spoke for many in his party when he lambasted the RNC change in a
> July letter to the New York Times, castigating it as "dangerous thinking"
> that shows Trump is controlled, or at least manipulated, by the Kremlin.
> Democrats resurrected this line of attack this weekend when Trump advisers
> acknowledged that campaign officials were behind the platform change.
>
> This attempt to equate Trump's opposition to arming Ukraine with some sort
> of treasonous allegiance to Putin masks a rather critical fact: namely, that
> the refusal to arm Ukraine with lethal weapons was one of Barack Obama's
> most steadfastly held policies. The original Post article that reported the
> RNC platform change noted this explicitly:
>
>
> Of course, Trump is not the only politician to oppose sending lethal weapons
> to Ukraine. President Obama decided not to authorize it, despite
> recommendations to do so from his top Europe officials in the State
> Department and the military.
>
> Early media reports about this controversy from outlets such as NPR also
> noted the irony at the heart of this debate: namely, that arming Ukraine was
> the long-time desire of hawks in the GOP such as John McCain, Lindsey Graham
> and Marco Rubio, but the Obama White House categorically resisted those
> pressures:
>
>
> Republicans in Congress have approved providing arms to the Ukrainian
> government but the White House has resisted, saying that it would only
> encourage more bloodshed.
>
> It's a rare Obama administration policy that the Trump campaign seems to
> agree with.
>
> Indeed, the GOP ultimately joined with the hawkish wing of the Democratic
> Party to demand that Obama provide Ukraine with lethal weapons to fight
> Russia, but Obama steadfastly refused. As the New York Times reported in
> March, 2015, "President Obama is coming under increasing pressure from both
> parties and more officials inside his own government to send arms to the
> country. But he remains unconvinced that they would help." When Obama kept
> refusing, leaders of the two parties threatened to enact legislation forcing
> Obama to arm Ukraine.
>
>
> The general Russia approach that Democrats now routinely depict as
> treasonous – avoiding confrontation with and even accommodating Russian
> interests, not just in Ukraine but also in Syria – was one of the defining
> traits of Obama's foreign policy. This fact shouldn't be overstated: Obama
> engaged in provocative acts such as moves to further expand NATO, non-lethal
> aid to Ukraine, and deploying "missile defense" weaponry in Romania. But he
> rejected most calls to confront Russia. That is one of the primary reasons
> the "foreign policy elite" – which, recall, Obama came into office
> denouncing and vowing to repudiate – was so dissatisfied with his
> presidency.
>
> A new, long article by Politico foreign affairs correspondent Susan Glasser
> – on the war being waged against Trump by Washington's "foreign policy
> elite" – makes this point very potently. Say what you will about Politico,
> but one thing they are very adept at doing is giving voice to cowardly
> Washington insiders by accommodating their cowardice and thus routinely
> granting them anonymity to express themselves. As journalistically dubious
> as it is to shield the world's most powerful people with anonymity, this
> practice sometimes ends up revealing what careerist denizens of Washington
> power really think but are too scared to say. Glasser's article, which
> largely consists of conveying the views of anonymous high-level Obama
> officials, contains this remarkable passage:
>
>
> In other words, Democrats are now waging war on, and are depicting as
> treasonous, one of Barack Obama's central and most steadfastly held foreign
> policy positions, one that he clung to despite attacks from leading members
> of both parties as well as the DC National Security Community. That's not
> Noam Chomsky drawing that comparison; it's an Obama appointee.
>
> The destructive bipartisan Foreign Policy Community was furious with Obama
> for not confronting Russia more, and is now furious with Trump for the same
> reason (though they certainly loath and fear Trump for other reasons,
> including the threat they believe he poses to U.S. imperial management
> through a combination of ineptitude, instability, toxic PR, naked rather
> than prettified savagery, and ideology; Glasser writes: "'Everything I've
> worked for for two decades is being destroyed,' a senior Republican told
> me").
>
>
>
> All of this demonstrates how fundamental a shift has taken place as a result
> of the Democrats' election-related fixation on The Grave Russian Threat. To
> see how severe the shift is, just look at this new polling data from CNN
> this morning that shows Republicans and Democrats doing a complete reversal
> on Russia in the span of eight months:
>
>
> The Democrats' obsession with Russia has not just led them to want
> investigations into allegations of hacking and (thus far evidence-free)
> suspicions of Trump campaign collusion – investigations which everyone
> should want. It's done far more than that: it's turned them into
> increasingly maniacal and militaristic hawks – dangerous ones – when it
> comes to confronting the only nation with a larger nuclear stockpile than
> the U.S., an arsenal accompanied by a sense of fear, if not outright
> encirclement, from NATO expansion.
>
> Put another way, establishment Democrats – with a largely political impetus
> but now as a matter of conviction – have completely abandoned Obama's
> accommodationist approach to Russia and have fully embraced the belligerent,
> hawkish mentality of John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Bill Kristol, the CIA and
> Evan McMullin. It should thus come as no surprise that a bill proposed by
> supreme warmonger Lindsey Graham to bar Trump from removing sanctions
> against Russia has more Democratic co-sponsors than Republican ones.
>
> This is why it's so notable that Democrats, in the name of "resistance,"
> have aligned with neocons, CIA operatives and former Bush officials: not
> because coalitions should be avoided with the ideologically impure, but
> because it reveals much about the political and policy mindset they've
> adopted in the name of stopping Trump. They're not "resisting" Trump from
> the left or with populist appeals – by, for instance, devoting themselves to
> protection of Wall Street and environmental regulations under attack, or
> supporting the revocation of jobs-killing free trade agreements, or
> demanding that Yemini civilians not be massacred.
>
> Instead, they're attacking him on the grounds of insufficient nationalism,
> militarism, and aggression: equating a desire to avoid confrontation with
> Moscow as a form of treason (just like they did when they were the leading
> Cold Warriors). This is why they're finding such common cause with the
> nation's most bloodthirsty militarists – not because it's an alliance of
> convenience but rather one of shared convictions (indeed, long before Trump,
> neocons were planning a re-alignment with Democrats under a Clinton
> presidency). And the most ironic – and over-looked – aspect of this whole
> volatile spectacle is how much Democrats have to repudiate and demonize one
> of Obama's core foreign policy legacies while pretending that they're not
> doing that.
>
>
>
>
>
Sunday, March 5, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] Meet the Democratic Senators Who Voted to Confirm Rick Perry as Energy Secretary
When all of the hens know that putting a Fox in charge of the Hen
House will destroy them all, and then just enough Hens vote with all
of the Foxes, allowing them to appoint a Fox to be in charge, there
can only be a couple of reasons why this occurred. Either these Hens
have been so propagandized that they believe that the Foxes really do
have the best interests of the Hens at heart, or several Hens have
sold out to the Foxes, in an effort to protect themselves above the
rest of the Hens.
Anyone who fails to understand that the goal of Rick Perry is to
dismantle the EPA, is either so stupid or so corrupted that they do
not deserve to hold Public Office. And shame on the people who put
them into office.
As if any further proof of Perry's intent is needed, remember, this is
the man who could not even remember the name of the agency which he is
now charged with "directing". Shades of 1984!
Carl Jarvis
Sent on 3/4/17,
Rick Perry. (photo: Reuters)
> Rick Perry. (photo: Reuters)
>
>
>
>
> Meet the Democratic Senators Who Voted to Confirm Rick Perry as Energy
> Secretary
>
> By Jordain Carney, The Hill
>
> 04 March 17
>
>
> The corruption is not limited to the Republican side of the isle. These are
> the Democratic Senators who joined all Republicans present to confirm
> former
> governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary. Some very "liberal" names here.
> Mark Warner (Va.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Tom Udall
> (N.M.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Claire
> McCaskill (Mo.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and Joe Donnelly
> (Ind.).
>
>
>
> The Senate voted Thursday to forward with Rick Perry's nomination to be
> Energy secretary.
>
> Senators voted 62-37 to get his nomination over an initial procedural
> hurdle, setting up a final vote for Perry as early as Friday if senators
> fail to reach a deal to speed up his nomination.
>
> Democratic Sens. Mark Warner (Va.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp
> (N.D.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Debbie Stabenow
> (Mich.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and
> Joe Donnelly (Ind.), and Independent Sen. Angus King (Maine), voted with
> all
> present Republicans to back Perry.
>
> GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson (Ga.) was not present.
>
> Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted ahead of the vote that
> Perry would get bipartisan support, adding that once the former Texas
> governor is confirmed, he can "begin leading on smarter policies at the
> Energy Department."
>
> Perry wasn't included on a list of top targets from Democrats.
>
> The Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 17-6 to approve
> Perry's nomination in late January, sending it to the full Senate.
>
> Perry pledged to abolish the Energy Department when he was running for
> president in 2011 - notably forgetting the department's name during a
> debate
> while listing the agencies he wanted to cut.
>
> He was forced to walk back that pledge during is confirmation hearing,
> instead saying he would focus on updating the country's nuclear arsenal and
> research activities.
>
> "I am committed to modernizing our nuclear stockpile, promoting and
> developing American energy in all forms, advancing the department's
> critical
> science and technology mission and carefully disposing of nuclear waste,"
> Perry said during his hearing.
>
> Democrats also raised concerns about Perry's position on climate change.
> The
> former governor says he believes in it, but doesn't know how much influence
> humans have had.
>
> Trump praised Perry last year as a potential 2018 challenger to Sen. Ted
> Cruz (R-Texas). Democrats have publicly fretted about whether Perry would
> be
> able to stand up to or influence the president.
>
> Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said during the confirmation hearing that she
> worried about Perry's ability to influence the White House and Trump's
> inner
> circle of advisers.
>
> "The governor's responses for the record left me wondering whether he would
> stand up to fight the White House's approach to these programs," she
>
>
>
House will destroy them all, and then just enough Hens vote with all
of the Foxes, allowing them to appoint a Fox to be in charge, there
can only be a couple of reasons why this occurred. Either these Hens
have been so propagandized that they believe that the Foxes really do
have the best interests of the Hens at heart, or several Hens have
sold out to the Foxes, in an effort to protect themselves above the
rest of the Hens.
Anyone who fails to understand that the goal of Rick Perry is to
dismantle the EPA, is either so stupid or so corrupted that they do
not deserve to hold Public Office. And shame on the people who put
them into office.
As if any further proof of Perry's intent is needed, remember, this is
the man who could not even remember the name of the agency which he is
now charged with "directing". Shades of 1984!
Carl Jarvis
Sent on 3/4/17,
Rick Perry. (photo: Reuters)
> Rick Perry. (photo: Reuters)
>
>
>
>
> Meet the Democratic Senators Who Voted to Confirm Rick Perry as Energy
> Secretary
>
> By Jordain Carney, The Hill
>
> 04 March 17
>
>
> The corruption is not limited to the Republican side of the isle. These are
> the Democratic Senators who joined all Republicans present to confirm
> former
> governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary. Some very "liberal" names here.
> Mark Warner (Va.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp (N.D.), Tom Udall
> (N.M.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Claire
> McCaskill (Mo.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and Joe Donnelly
> (Ind.).
>
>
>
> The Senate voted Thursday to forward with Rick Perry's nomination to be
> Energy secretary.
>
> Senators voted 62-37 to get his nomination over an initial procedural
> hurdle, setting up a final vote for Perry as early as Friday if senators
> fail to reach a deal to speed up his nomination.
>
> Democratic Sens. Mark Warner (Va.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), Heidi Heitkamp
> (N.D.), Tom Udall (N.M.), Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.), Debbie Stabenow
> (Mich.), Claire McCaskill (Mo.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Ben Cardin (Md.) and
> Joe Donnelly (Ind.), and Independent Sen. Angus King (Maine), voted with
> all
> present Republicans to back Perry.
>
> GOP Sen. Johnny Isakson (Ga.) was not present.
>
> Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) predicted ahead of the vote that
> Perry would get bipartisan support, adding that once the former Texas
> governor is confirmed, he can "begin leading on smarter policies at the
> Energy Department."
>
> Perry wasn't included on a list of top targets from Democrats.
>
> The Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted 17-6 to approve
> Perry's nomination in late January, sending it to the full Senate.
>
> Perry pledged to abolish the Energy Department when he was running for
> president in 2011 - notably forgetting the department's name during a
> debate
> while listing the agencies he wanted to cut.
>
> He was forced to walk back that pledge during is confirmation hearing,
> instead saying he would focus on updating the country's nuclear arsenal and
> research activities.
>
> "I am committed to modernizing our nuclear stockpile, promoting and
> developing American energy in all forms, advancing the department's
> critical
> science and technology mission and carefully disposing of nuclear waste,"
> Perry said during his hearing.
>
> Democrats also raised concerns about Perry's position on climate change.
> The
> former governor says he believes in it, but doesn't know how much influence
> humans have had.
>
> Trump praised Perry last year as a potential 2018 challenger to Sen. Ted
> Cruz (R-Texas). Democrats have publicly fretted about whether Perry would
> be
> able to stand up to or influence the president.
>
> Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) said during the confirmation hearing that she
> worried about Perry's ability to influence the White House and Trump's
> inner
> circle of advisers.
>
> "The governor's responses for the record left me wondering whether he would
> stand up to fight the White House's approach to these programs," she
>
>
>
Re: [blind-democracy] Bill Introduced to Ban Howard Zinn Books From Arkansas Public Schools
When the long entrenched Ruling Class is threatened, regardless of
when or where in Time, one of the first Defensive Acts is the
Offensive Act of destroying any literature or materials which disagree
with the Ruling Class. From the burning of the Alexandria
Library...and probably far earlier examples, to the Nazi Purge of non
Aryan people, declared inferior to the Master Race, and the burning of
any books that taught, or suggested a different belief, to the more
recent times when Christian groups burn the Koran, the practice has
been an effort to protect the Ruling Class, and for the most part it
has been a total failure.
But here we go again. One of the truly great historical works, A
Peoples History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is seen as a
threat to the White Supremacists Ruling Class in Arkansas. Clear
minded people understand that the effort to remove Zinn's book from
circulation is simply an admission by these White Racists, that they
have no rational defense for their long established control over the
People of Arkansas.
As an Agnostic, I disagree with books such as the Holy Bible or the
Koran. And yet, there is great value in these books. If my best
argument against the belief that there is some Intelligent Creator
directing our lives, is to rush about burning their books, then I, and
my beliefs, are failures.
But beyond all of this, what people need to watch out for, is that
once the books have been removed, the next step is to begin removing
those people who subscribe to the teachings in the newly banned books.
First from their jobs. Next, from their communities. Prison. And
even execution.
Are we witnessing the res erection of the Witch Hunts of early
America? Are we going to purge our People of whatever the Ruling
Class finds undesirable? Will we wind up with everybody looking and
acting like Donald Trump?
Carl Jarvis
Sent on 3/5/17:
> Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
> Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
>
>
>
>
> Bill Introduced to Ban Howard Zinn Books From Arkansas Public Schools
>
> By Max Brantley, Arkansas Times
>
> 04 March 17
>
>
>
> he deadline for new legislation is fast approaching and it can't come too
> soon. Just in from Sen. Rep. Kim Hendren: Legislation to prohibit any
> publicly supported schools (you, too, charters) from including in
> curriculum or course materials any books or other material authored by
> Howard Zinn.
>
> (Actually, anything Zinn wrote before 1959 is not covered.)
> > Zinn, who died in 2010, was a Ph.D. historian, social activist and more who
> wrote the best-selling "A People's History of the United States." A version
> for young readers came out in 2007.
>
> His New York Times obituary probably gives you a taste of the danger Kim
> Hendren sees in Howard Zinn:
>
>
> Proudly, unabashedly radical, with a mop of white hair and bushy eyebrows
> and an impish smile, Mr. Zinn, who retired from the history faculty at
> Boston University two decades ago, delighted in debating ideological foes,
> not the least his own college president, and in lancing what he considered
> platitudes, not the least that American history was a heroic march toward
> democracy.
>
> Almost an oddity at first, with a printing of just 4,000 in 1980, "A
> People's History of the United States" has sold nearly two million copies.
> To describe it as a revisionist account is to risk understatement. A
> conventional historical account held no allure; he concentrated on what he
> saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust
> of
> Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. He also
> shined an insistent light on the revolutionary struggles of impoverished
> farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters of slavery and war.
>
> Such stories are more often recounted in textbooks today; they were not at
> the time.
>
> "Our nation had gone through an awful lot - the Vietnam War, civil rights,
> Watergate - yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist
> glorification of country," Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent interview with The
> New York Times. "I got the sense that people were hungry for a different,
> more honest take."
>
> Even some on the liberal side thought Zinn's revisionism went too far.
>
> That criticism barely raised a hair on Mr. Zinn's neck. "It's not an
> unbiased account; so what?" he said in the Times interview. "If you look at
> history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated, it's a
> different story."
>
> He inspired a movie, documentaries and song. Dangerous stuff for the
> Arkansas student in one legislator's
>
>
>
when or where in Time, one of the first Defensive Acts is the
Offensive Act of destroying any literature or materials which disagree
with the Ruling Class. From the burning of the Alexandria
Library...and probably far earlier examples, to the Nazi Purge of non
Aryan people, declared inferior to the Master Race, and the burning of
any books that taught, or suggested a different belief, to the more
recent times when Christian groups burn the Koran, the practice has
been an effort to protect the Ruling Class, and for the most part it
has been a total failure.
But here we go again. One of the truly great historical works, A
Peoples History of the United States, by Howard Zinn, is seen as a
threat to the White Supremacists Ruling Class in Arkansas. Clear
minded people understand that the effort to remove Zinn's book from
circulation is simply an admission by these White Racists, that they
have no rational defense for their long established control over the
People of Arkansas.
As an Agnostic, I disagree with books such as the Holy Bible or the
Koran. And yet, there is great value in these books. If my best
argument against the belief that there is some Intelligent Creator
directing our lives, is to rush about burning their books, then I, and
my beliefs, are failures.
But beyond all of this, what people need to watch out for, is that
once the books have been removed, the next step is to begin removing
those people who subscribe to the teachings in the newly banned books.
First from their jobs. Next, from their communities. Prison. And
even execution.
Are we witnessing the res erection of the Witch Hunts of early
America? Are we going to purge our People of whatever the Ruling
Class finds undesirable? Will we wind up with everybody looking and
acting like Donald Trump?
Carl Jarvis
Sent on 3/5/17:
> Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
> Howard Zinn. (photo: The Progressive)
>
>
>
>
> Bill Introduced to Ban Howard Zinn Books From Arkansas Public Schools
>
> By Max Brantley, Arkansas Times
>
> 04 March 17
>
>
>
> he deadline for new legislation is fast approaching and it can't come too
> soon. Just in from Sen. Rep. Kim Hendren: Legislation to prohibit any
> publicly supported schools (you, too, charters) from including in
> curriculum or course materials any books or other material authored by
> Howard Zinn.
>
> (Actually, anything Zinn wrote before 1959 is not covered.)
> > Zinn, who died in 2010, was a Ph.D. historian, social activist and more who
> wrote the best-selling "A People's History of the United States." A version
> for young readers came out in 2007.
>
> His New York Times obituary probably gives you a taste of the danger Kim
> Hendren sees in Howard Zinn:
>
>
> Proudly, unabashedly radical, with a mop of white hair and bushy eyebrows
> and an impish smile, Mr. Zinn, who retired from the history faculty at
> Boston University two decades ago, delighted in debating ideological foes,
> not the least his own college president, and in lancing what he considered
> platitudes, not the least that American history was a heroic march toward
> democracy.
>
> Almost an oddity at first, with a printing of just 4,000 in 1980, "A
> People's History of the United States" has sold nearly two million copies.
> To describe it as a revisionist account is to risk understatement. A
> conventional historical account held no allure; he concentrated on what he
> saw as the genocidal depredations of Christopher Columbus, the blood lust
> of
> Theodore Roosevelt and the racial failings of Abraham Lincoln. He also
> shined an insistent light on the revolutionary struggles of impoverished
> farmers, feminists, laborers and resisters of slavery and war.
>
> Such stories are more often recounted in textbooks today; they were not at
> the time.
>
> "Our nation had gone through an awful lot - the Vietnam War, civil rights,
> Watergate - yet the textbooks offered the same fundamental nationalist
> glorification of country," Mr. Zinn recalled in a recent interview with The
> New York Times. "I got the sense that people were hungry for a different,
> more honest take."
>
> Even some on the liberal side thought Zinn's revisionism went too far.
>
> That criticism barely raised a hair on Mr. Zinn's neck. "It's not an
> unbiased account; so what?" he said in the Times interview. "If you look at
> history from the perspective of the slaughtered and mutilated, it's a
> different story."
>
> He inspired a movie, documentaries and song. Dangerous stuff for the
> Arkansas student in one legislator's
>
>
>
Saturday, March 4, 2017
Donald Trump, a very busy Beaver!
Some of the items on the following list are inconsequential, by
themselves, but together they build a very scary picture.
Carl
****
I Gave Donald Trump a Chance, and Then He…
News,
The Political Pyre
February 26, 2017
1.
Restarted
the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
2. Instituted a federal hiring freeze that
blocked
2,000 vital, new positions at the VA, and
indefinitely suspended
Army childcare programs for vets.
3. Approved a raid in Yemen that killed 30 people including at least
10 civilians,
many of whom were women and children, as well as U.S. Navy Seal Ryan Owens.
4.
Reinstated and strengthened
the global gag rule thereby pulling all world-wide federal funding
from any institutions that even attempt to educate patients about
abortion.
5.
Rescinded
federal bathroom protections for trans students.
6. Used the office of the presidency to
criticize Nordstrom,
a private company, for no longer selling his daughter's clothing line.
7. Didn't
fully divest
from his businesses and has transferred many of his companies to his
sons
opening the door for serious conflicts of interest.
8. Didn't release his tax returns like he promised and has
no plans
to do so.
9. Demonized and repeatedly
attacked
the free press in order to build a propaganda machine.
10. Signed a
bill
reversing the Stream Protection Rule making it far easier for coal
companies to dump mining waste in rivers, lakes and streams.
11. Announced plans to sign
executive orders
lifting a coal mining ban on federal land, and lifting or limiting
restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions
from utility companies.
12. Signed an
executive order,
later ruled to be
unconstitutional,
barring immigrants and travelers from 7 Muslim-majority nations from
entering the U.S.
13.
Lied
about inauguration crowd size.
14.
Lied
about the size of his electoral college victory.
15.
Lied
about attacks in Sweden, yet never mentioned attacks in
Kansas
or
Quebec
perpetrated by white men on people of color.
16.
Lied
about being solely responsible for Lockheed Martin cutting $700
million from the F-35 program.
17.
Lied
about the New York Times failing.
18.
Lied
about Chris Cuomo never asking Senator Blumenthal about
misrepresenting his service in Vietnam.
19.
Lied
about major news organizations intentionally ignoring terrorist attacks.
20.
Lied
about the murder rate being the highest its been in 47 years.
21.
Lied
about Philadelphia's murder rate increasing.
22.
Lied
about people being killed at Obama's farewell address.
23.
Lied
about Obamacare covering "very few people."
24.
Lied
about the media being less trusted than congress.
25.
Lied
about sanctuary cities being hotbeds of crime.
26.
Said
"Any negative polls are fake news."
27.
Berated
the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
28. Allegedly
threatened
to send U.S. troops into Mexico.
29. Used the National Prayer breakfast to
throw shade
at Arnold Schwarzenegger.
30.
Said
he would "get rid of and totally destroy" the Johnson amendment,
which was designed to keep religion out of politics.
31. Appointed
Betsy Devo
s, a billionaire GOP donor with no public school experience to run our
public school system.
32. Appointed
fossil-fuel-shil
l and
climate change-denier
Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. He's sued the EPA
13 times.
33. Appointed Jeff Sessions, a man who's racist comments
cost him a federal judgeship
in 1986, as the attorney general.
34. Appointed Rex Tillerson, a former Exxon CEO with
no military of government experience
as secretary of state.
35. Appointed Rick Perry, a man with who once
forgot
the Department of Energy existed,
flunked
organic chemistry and received Cs and Ds in other science courses to
run the Department of Energy.
36. Appointed Ben Carson, a man with no government, housing or management
experience
to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Two weeks
prior to being nominated, Carson's business manager Armstrong Williams
said
"Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a
federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position
that could
cripple the presidency."
37. Appointed former Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn to head the National
Economic Council.
38. Appointed former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin to head the
Treasury Department.
39. Appointed Alt-right hero and former Breitbart Editor Stephen
Bannon as chief strategist and later elevated him to the National
Security Council.
40. Continued to
criticize
Hillary Clinton, without ever criticizing Vladimir Putin.
41.
Threatened
Chicago with martial law.
42.
Threatened
to take away funding from all sanctuary cities.
43. Announced plans to
repeal
Dodd-Frank and fiduciary rule.
44. Plans to make
major cuts
to the EPA while dramatically increasing military spending.
45.
Demeaned
our court system and questioned a federal judge's credentials.
46.
Continued
to push evidence-less claims of voter fraud.
47.
Tweeted
"I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT" to a court.
48. Cost taxpayers
serious money
in travel expenses.
Estimates
by the Washington Post show that his first month in office has cost
nearly as much as Obama's first year
49. Set his sons out to travel the globe, growing the Trump brand with
secret service in tow while taxpayers are footing
the bill.
50.
Nominated
Neil Gorsuch, an originalist, for the open supreme court seat.
51.
Hired
hateful,
loony
creationist
Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead a higher education task force.
52. Tapped vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to
head a commission
on vaccine safety.
53. Gave a belligerent 57 minute press conference in which he attacked
the media and
lied
about numerous inconsequential things.
54. Made a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day and
never mentioned
Jewish people.
55.
Fired
acting Attorney General Sally Yates for saying the travel ban was
unconstitutional. A few weeks later, the travel ban was ruled
unconditional in federal
court.
56. Supported his newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to
rescind
Obama-era efforts and build up the private prison system once again.
themselves, but together they build a very scary picture.
Carl
****
I Gave Donald Trump a Chance, and Then He…
News,
The Political Pyre
February 26, 2017
1.
Restarted
the Keystone XL and Dakota Access Pipelines.
2. Instituted a federal hiring freeze that
blocked
2,000 vital, new positions at the VA, and
indefinitely suspended
Army childcare programs for vets.
3. Approved a raid in Yemen that killed 30 people including at least
10 civilians,
many of whom were women and children, as well as U.S. Navy Seal Ryan Owens.
4.
Reinstated and strengthened
the global gag rule thereby pulling all world-wide federal funding
from any institutions that even attempt to educate patients about
abortion.
5.
Rescinded
federal bathroom protections for trans students.
6. Used the office of the presidency to
criticize Nordstrom,
a private company, for no longer selling his daughter's clothing line.
7. Didn't
fully divest
from his businesses and has transferred many of his companies to his
sons
opening the door for serious conflicts of interest.
8. Didn't release his tax returns like he promised and has
no plans
to do so.
9. Demonized and repeatedly
attacked
the free press in order to build a propaganda machine.
10. Signed a
bill
reversing the Stream Protection Rule making it far easier for coal
companies to dump mining waste in rivers, lakes and streams.
11. Announced plans to sign
executive orders
lifting a coal mining ban on federal land, and lifting or limiting
restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions
from utility companies.
12. Signed an
executive order,
later ruled to be
unconstitutional,
barring immigrants and travelers from 7 Muslim-majority nations from
entering the U.S.
13.
Lied
about inauguration crowd size.
14.
Lied
about the size of his electoral college victory.
15.
Lied
about attacks in Sweden, yet never mentioned attacks in
Kansas
or
Quebec
perpetrated by white men on people of color.
16.
Lied
about being solely responsible for Lockheed Martin cutting $700
million from the F-35 program.
17.
Lied
about the New York Times failing.
18.
Lied
about Chris Cuomo never asking Senator Blumenthal about
misrepresenting his service in Vietnam.
19.
Lied
about major news organizations intentionally ignoring terrorist attacks.
20.
Lied
about the murder rate being the highest its been in 47 years.
21.
Lied
about Philadelphia's murder rate increasing.
22.
Lied
about people being killed at Obama's farewell address.
23.
Lied
about Obamacare covering "very few people."
24.
Lied
about the media being less trusted than congress.
25.
Lied
about sanctuary cities being hotbeds of crime.
26.
Said
"Any negative polls are fake news."
27.
Berated
the Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.
28. Allegedly
threatened
to send U.S. troops into Mexico.
29. Used the National Prayer breakfast to
throw shade
at Arnold Schwarzenegger.
30.
Said
he would "get rid of and totally destroy" the Johnson amendment,
which was designed to keep religion out of politics.
31. Appointed
Betsy Devo
s, a billionaire GOP donor with no public school experience to run our
public school system.
32. Appointed
fossil-fuel-shil
l and
climate change-denier
Scott Pruitt to head the EPA. He's sued the EPA
13 times.
33. Appointed Jeff Sessions, a man who's racist comments
cost him a federal judgeship
in 1986, as the attorney general.
34. Appointed Rex Tillerson, a former Exxon CEO with
no military of government experience
as secretary of state.
35. Appointed Rick Perry, a man with who once
forgot
the Department of Energy existed,
flunked
organic chemistry and received Cs and Ds in other science courses to
run the Department of Energy.
36. Appointed Ben Carson, a man with no government, housing or management
experience
to run the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Two weeks
prior to being nominated, Carson's business manager Armstrong Williams
said
"Dr. Carson feels he has no government experience, he's never run a
federal agency. The last thing he would want to do was take a position
that could
cripple the presidency."
37. Appointed former Goldman Sachs COO Gary Cohn to head the National
Economic Council.
38. Appointed former Goldman Sachs partner Steven Mnuchin to head the
Treasury Department.
39. Appointed Alt-right hero and former Breitbart Editor Stephen
Bannon as chief strategist and later elevated him to the National
Security Council.
40. Continued to
criticize
Hillary Clinton, without ever criticizing Vladimir Putin.
41.
Threatened
Chicago with martial law.
42.
Threatened
to take away funding from all sanctuary cities.
43. Announced plans to
repeal
Dodd-Frank and fiduciary rule.
44. Plans to make
major cuts
to the EPA while dramatically increasing military spending.
45.
Demeaned
our court system and questioned a federal judge's credentials.
46.
Continued
to push evidence-less claims of voter fraud.
47.
Tweeted
"I'LL SEE YOU IN COURT" to a court.
48. Cost taxpayers
serious money
in travel expenses.
Estimates
by the Washington Post show that his first month in office has cost
nearly as much as Obama's first year
49. Set his sons out to travel the globe, growing the Trump brand with
secret service in tow while taxpayers are footing
the bill.
50.
Nominated
Neil Gorsuch, an originalist, for the open supreme court seat.
51.
Hired
hateful,
loony
creationist
Jerry Falwell Jr. to lead a higher education task force.
52. Tapped vaccine-skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to
head a commission
on vaccine safety.
53. Gave a belligerent 57 minute press conference in which he attacked
the media and
lied
about numerous inconsequential things.
54. Made a statement for Holocaust Remembrance Day and
never mentioned
Jewish people.
55.
Fired
acting Attorney General Sally Yates for saying the travel ban was
unconstitutional. A few weeks later, the travel ban was ruled
unconditional in federal
court.
56. Supported his newly-appointed Attorney General Jeff Sessions' decision to
rescind
Obama-era efforts and build up the private prison system once again.
Wednesday, March 1, 2017
Re: [blind-democracy] FW: Popular Resistance Newsletter - Privatizers versus People
Of course the idea of any of us having the money to afford going out
to dinner, attending a movie or even sending our children to our
neighborhood Corporate School, is doubtful.
Grimm's Fairy Tales were never so scary as the Fake News Tales being
read to us by Uncle Donald. And speaking of Fake News, what about
this crazy myth that more billions for Defense will keep our borders
safe from Terrorists. It's an old story of misdirection. Pick out
one group or another, Japanese during WW II, Commies during the
McCarthy reign of terror, Mexicans sneaking across our borders in
order to grab all those posh jobs from "Normal White Americans", and
through it all we look with suspicion at those Jews who seem to be
everywhere and stealing our money. Now we have those new Terrorists,
them evil Muslims. Add to them all the other illegals sneaking into
our wonderful nation, wanting nothing more than to blow us all to
Kingdom Come. Those jealous Bastards!
But Praise be to Jesus, we have the Trumpster riding across the
mountain pass to defend us from Slavery by Terrorists.
Forget the crumbling highways and the bridges and the public buildings
and decrepit public education, and the decline of the elderly into
poverty. The Trumpster has the answer. Ten percent increase to our
military budget. That figure of close to sixty billion dollars is as
great as the entire military budget of Great Briton. It will bring
the War Machine to nearly six hundred and sixty billion dollars. But
estimates do not include all the military costs beyond the Pentagon.
All of the special agencies, the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Border
Patrol, Secret Service, all and more who are involved in "protecting"
America. That could bring our total annual cost of "Protecting"
America to around nine hundred billion dollars.
And how will our Great White Father pay for all of this? Well first,
The Trumpster, like any good Corporate Capitalist, will not pay for
this with any of His money. Always spend the other fellows money, is
one of the Cardinal Rules of Capitalism. So The Trumpster will take
the money from the People. Not all of the People, however, since he
plans to cut the taxes for the wealthy Americans, thus placing the
heavy financial load squarely on the backs of...the rest of us.
When all the dust settles, and all the BS has been spread, we
Americans will find that we are not protecting our borders after all.
The fact is that the Terrorists are already among us. Well
entrenched. In fact, they already own over 41% of our total wealth,
and have every intention of owning it all...in the next four years, if
possible. And when we finally come to our Working Class Senses, and
throw the bums out, we will be left with a broken, broke nation. And
the Terrorists who plundered us? Well, the gentle breezes of the
South Pacific Isles will find many of them, basking in the sun
strolling along their pure white sandy beaches, dreaming of one day
returning to once again sweet talk their way into a place where they
can begin the raping of the new wealth gathered by the hard labor of
the Working Class.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/1/17, >
> From: PopularResistance.org
> [mailto:info=popularresistance.org@mail177.atl121.mcsv.net] On Behalf Of
> PopularResistance.org
> Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2017 10:04 AM
> Newsletter - Privatizers versus People
>
>
>
>
>
>
> A snapshot of the future: You drive your kids to school, go to work, the
> hospital or a movie and you are charged for every mile of road you use
> through an EZ Pass.
>
> This newsletter is also available
> on the web
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=5810eca612&e=e5b1868e14>
> here.
>
>
>
>
>
> Image removed by sender.
>
>
>
>
> A snapshot from the future: You drive your kids to school, go to work, the
> hospital or a movie and you are charged for every mile of road you use
> through an EZ Pass. The road has been developed and maintained by a bond
> funded by wealthy investors at very high interest rates. The investors are
> the first on the list to be paid, since the city needs to keep a strong bond
> rating in order to borrow more from investors.
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. EZ Pass Only
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> Bruce Dixon, editor of
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=af098c5bca&e=e5b1868e14>
> Black Agenda Report, writes, in "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=8848b7f1c6&e=e5b1868e14>
> EZ Pass — Tip Of The Road Privatization Vacuum Cleaner," that trade
> associations and lobby groups are working toward 'pay-to-use' roads in the
> near future. Roads will be privatized or become public-private partnerships.
> If we are unable to pay, we cannot use the roads or may even lose our
> license. Dixon points out that under the Obama administration toll lanes
> were allowed on more existing highways to advance toward privatized roads.
>
> This is the essence of privatization today: turn a public good into a profit
> center for Wall Street. US economic policy has created a wealth class that
> is grotesquely wealthy and under-taxed so it has the money that the
> government needs to provide public services. This forces the government to
> borrow money from or sell a public service to the privateers or to create a
> public-private partnership (disguised corporate welfare and crony
> capitalism) in order to provide essential services.
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Health Over Profit for Everyone
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> This model was applied during the Obama years on a mega-level to health
> care. Rather than treating universal health care as
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=68ff5cd02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> a public service and expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone,
> Obama worked with corrupt healthcare profiteers – the insurance and
> pharmaceutical industries and health care investors – for a law that
> benefited them. We described Obamacare as "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=dc52b25d49&e=e5b1868e14>
> the biggest insurance scam in history" in 2013, predicting it would lead to
> increased premiums, out-of-pocket costs and deductibles and decreased
> coverage while making the medical industry wealthy – this is exactly what
> happened.
>
> The Market Rules While Public Services Are Cut
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Stop TPP, TiSA and TTIP protest Earth Rising
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> Under Obama and previous presidents, the market was king while public
> services were diminished or disappeared. Obama is infamous for his triad of
> trade agreements: the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=78a790604b&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c0c5a1fb31&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=cec82a9cd8&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trade in Services Agreement. The common theme of all three was privatization
> by granting greater power to corporations, making it impossible to regulate
> them, and turning public services into profit centers for big business.
>
> The TPP and TTIP both seem to be dead. It is unclear what the fate of TiSA
> will be under President Trump, but
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fe58a3fcb7&e=e5b1868e14>
> we must not allow it to be completed. Last week Trump said he wants no more
> multi-country trade deals and will pursue one-on-one negotiations where the
> US can demand terms from a smaller country and easily walk away if the
> country refuses.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. by Annette Dubois
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c4c85dc2e0&e=e5b1868e14>
> TiSA is a grave danger. It is an agreement of 52 nations (including all of
> Europe) and from
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=dac8258048&e=e5b1868e14>
> numerous
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b8e33c8747&e=e5b1868e14>
> leaks we
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=69b479aacc&e=e5b1868e14>
> know the thrust of TiSA is privatization of all services. Services are 80
> percent of the US economy and include the postal service, education, health
> care, etc. TiSA creates a one-way street to privatization with incentives to
> push public services to be privatized. Once this is done,they cannot return
> to the public sphere. Recent leaks show that
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f1b644a77b&e=e5b1868e14>
> TiSA negotiators are having problems, but if they make compromises, TiSA may
> still survive.
>
> A major area in the US where we have seen privatization destroying a
> critical public service under the last four presidents is education. The
> damage is expected to increase under the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b71085fbcf&e=e5b1868e14>
> extremist policies of Secretary
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ad3a463205&e=e5b1868e14>
> DeVos, although
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53a89523e0&e=e5b1868e14>
> she is igniting protest (see
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fb7cdf4db4&e=e5b1868e14>
> here and
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b7c6f180aa&e=e5b1868e14>
> here).
>
> Education activist, Morna McDermott, writes about the path to privatize
> education in "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=5c0a7f4ae9&e=e5b1868e14>
> The Long Game: Where Art Thou Public Education?". She points to the
> extremist "Choices in Education Act," which would open the flood gates of
> privatization schemes like vouchers and charters, but she also points out
> that the Democrat's answer to No Child Left Behind, The Every Student
> Succeeds Act (
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ad5f64dcdb&e=e5b1868e14>
> ESSA), does the same.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Government of the lesser of two evils
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Education
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=3751782ac0&e=e5b1868e14>
> 'deform' is rooted in the lesser-evilism of the two-party problem of the
> United States. While both parties clothe their deforms in nice-sounding
> labels, the reality is that both parties are privatizing education so big
> profits can be made off of school budgets while students suffer from a
> deteriorating education system. The privatizers can afford the best Madison
> Avenue propagandists available, but in reality words like '
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=097998172c&e=e5b1868e14>
> education choice' have never served the disadvantaged but play on people's
> desperation and have
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=14d28de8ac&e=e5b1868e14>
> racist roots.
>
> In Baltimore, we may be seeing the end of public education through the
> starvation of public schools. The
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b55b0f9085&e=e5b1868e14>
> public schools currently have a $130 million shortfall, which is likely to
> mean firing 1,000 educators. Not only will this devastate Baltimore schools,
> it will undermine the Baltimore economy. When you starve a public budget,
> people get desperate, including parents, teachers, students and residents;
> desperation is an opportunity for privatizers to come in and "save the day,"
> a disguise for the privatization, profiteering and destruction of public
> education. Adding to the concerns is that Baltimore "School Choice" advocate
> Jason Botel is now the second in command under DeVos. Will Baltimore be an
> experiment for full privatization of public schools?
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Immigrant rights activists protested the Gates
> Foundation for their support of notorious private prison company GEO Group.
> (Photo: Alex Garland via Presente.org)
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> This week the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fa5619c472&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trump administration moved backward on the issue of private prisons. Obama
> had taken initial steps to stop the use of private prisons, but Attorney
> General Sessions withdrew his order. Private prisons treat inmates poorly,
> whether it is the quality of food or health care, and require high levels of
> occupancy, which encourages more prison sentences.
>
> Another problem with privatization is lack of accountability. Corporations
> often skirt regulations because they know that there aren't enough
> regulators to enforce the rules and that even if they are caught, they only
> have to pay a fine. Their lobbyists work to weaken or stop regulations to
> protect the environment, workers or consumers because they interfere with
> their profits. Trump's cabinet consists of
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=7f3d08ae41&e=e5b1868e14>
> people appointed to federal agencies that they have been critical of or want
> to see destroyed. And regulations are being repealed, which will lead to
> expensive environmental and other types of damage.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. No DAPL Protect the Water
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> The Trump administration has moved forward on the Dakota Access Pipeline and
> the Keystone Pipeline without environmental reviews. If one pipeline
> explodes or has a significant leak, the cost in damage to water, land and
> air will be massive. Cutting corners for profit will almost assuredly cost
> the government more money in the future.
>
> The bottom line on privatization is well described in
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eb0087320b&e=e5b1868e14>
> an article on public-private partnerships by Pete Dolack. He points out we
> can expect to see a lot more public-private partnerships under Trump,
> especially for his infrastructure plans. This is just another form of crony
> capitalism which will result in public money going to the wealthiest
> investors. Trump will cut taxes on the wealthiest and build infrastructure
> with private dollars, meaning profit as well as tax credits go to investors,
> not the public. Dolack writes:
>
> "The contractor, of course, expects a profit from the arrangement. The
> government doesn't — and thus corporate expectation of profits requires that
> revenues be increased and expenses must be cut. Less services and fewer
> employees means more profit for the contractor, and because the contractor
> is a private enterprise there's no longer public accountability.
>
> "Public-private partnerships are nothing more than a variation on
> straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost, with working
> people having to pay more for reduced quality of service."
>
> What Is the Alternative?
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Privatization-Equals-Corruption1
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> There are alternatives to privatization, de-regulation and other policies
> that funnel tax dollars and profits to the wealthy. Author
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a78ac6e3a7&e=e5b1868e14>
> John Boik urges us to look at how we create "an economy of meaning," which
> begins with a rarely asked question: What economic system designs, out of
> all conceivable ones, might be among the best at helping us meet real needs?
> This question expands our thinking and creativity about the economy. It is
> not limited to a capitalism vs. socialism. It is not just about creating
> jobs, but about creating jobs people want to do. By making well-being
> central to the economy, new approaches will be tried and, if they work,
> expanded. The current economy does not work for most people. As we re-think
> the economy, the centrality of well-being is a good foundation.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Privatization of water protest
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> In a chapter for the book "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a580498d26&e=e5b1868e14>
> Moving Beyond Capitalism",
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=37e01cfffe&e=e5b1868e14>
> we suggested the commons as the antidote to predatory capitalism.
> Concentrated wealth is derived by taking from the commons for personal gain
> in an undemocratic way. Public goods, lands and services are part of the
> commons that we should be sharing. Doing so would reverse the wealth divide
> and build our mutual prosperity, e.g. all should have equity in healthcare,
> access to the Internet and high quality education. Further, organizing and
> governing the commons requires group decision-making, which will help to
> reinvent democracy.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Commons not Capitalism
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> These are times of radical change. We are in the midst of an evolution. The
> old world is one of concentrated economic power that creates inequality and
> corrupt, hierarchical governance to serve concentrated wealth through
> exploitation of people and planet. There is another way. We've reached a
> tipping point, as evidenced by the worldwide revolt through Occupy, the Arab
> Spring, the Indignados and other movements.
>
> We can reverse the trend toward privatization and inequality by claiming the
> commons for our mutual prosperity. We can build a more just, sustainable
> and democratic world, a world based on the common good, in which people work
> together to solve common problems and create an equitable economy that
> betters the lives for all.
>
>
> NOTE: Popular Resistance is able to provide movement news and resources
> because of the support of our readers. If you are able, please donate so
> that we can continue.
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=78dce6c3e5&e=e5b1868e14>
> Click here to make a tax-deductible contribution.
>
>
>
>
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>
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>
>
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to dinner, attending a movie or even sending our children to our
neighborhood Corporate School, is doubtful.
Grimm's Fairy Tales were never so scary as the Fake News Tales being
read to us by Uncle Donald. And speaking of Fake News, what about
this crazy myth that more billions for Defense will keep our borders
safe from Terrorists. It's an old story of misdirection. Pick out
one group or another, Japanese during WW II, Commies during the
McCarthy reign of terror, Mexicans sneaking across our borders in
order to grab all those posh jobs from "Normal White Americans", and
through it all we look with suspicion at those Jews who seem to be
everywhere and stealing our money. Now we have those new Terrorists,
them evil Muslims. Add to them all the other illegals sneaking into
our wonderful nation, wanting nothing more than to blow us all to
Kingdom Come. Those jealous Bastards!
But Praise be to Jesus, we have the Trumpster riding across the
mountain pass to defend us from Slavery by Terrorists.
Forget the crumbling highways and the bridges and the public buildings
and decrepit public education, and the decline of the elderly into
poverty. The Trumpster has the answer. Ten percent increase to our
military budget. That figure of close to sixty billion dollars is as
great as the entire military budget of Great Briton. It will bring
the War Machine to nearly six hundred and sixty billion dollars. But
estimates do not include all the military costs beyond the Pentagon.
All of the special agencies, the FBI, CIA, Homeland Security, Border
Patrol, Secret Service, all and more who are involved in "protecting"
America. That could bring our total annual cost of "Protecting"
America to around nine hundred billion dollars.
And how will our Great White Father pay for all of this? Well first,
The Trumpster, like any good Corporate Capitalist, will not pay for
this with any of His money. Always spend the other fellows money, is
one of the Cardinal Rules of Capitalism. So The Trumpster will take
the money from the People. Not all of the People, however, since he
plans to cut the taxes for the wealthy Americans, thus placing the
heavy financial load squarely on the backs of...the rest of us.
When all the dust settles, and all the BS has been spread, we
Americans will find that we are not protecting our borders after all.
The fact is that the Terrorists are already among us. Well
entrenched. In fact, they already own over 41% of our total wealth,
and have every intention of owning it all...in the next four years, if
possible. And when we finally come to our Working Class Senses, and
throw the bums out, we will be left with a broken, broke nation. And
the Terrorists who plundered us? Well, the gentle breezes of the
South Pacific Isles will find many of them, basking in the sun
strolling along their pure white sandy beaches, dreaming of one day
returning to once again sweet talk their way into a place where they
can begin the raping of the new wealth gathered by the hard labor of
the Working Class.
Carl Jarvis
On 3/1/17, >
> From: PopularResistance.org
> [mailto:info=popularresistance.org@mail177.atl121.mcsv.net] On Behalf Of
> PopularResistance.org
> Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2017 10:04 AM
> Newsletter - Privatizers versus People
>
>
>
>
>
>
> A snapshot of the future: You drive your kids to school, go to work, the
> hospital or a movie and you are charged for every mile of road you use
> through an EZ Pass.
>
> This newsletter is also available
> on the web
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=5810eca612&e=e5b1868e14>
> here.
>
>
>
>
>
> Image removed by sender.
>
>
>
>
> A snapshot from the future: You drive your kids to school, go to work, the
> hospital or a movie and you are charged for every mile of road you use
> through an EZ Pass. The road has been developed and maintained by a bond
> funded by wealthy investors at very high interest rates. The investors are
> the first on the list to be paid, since the city needs to keep a strong bond
> rating in order to borrow more from investors.
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. EZ Pass Only
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=05c0f0ae2c&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> Bruce Dixon, editor of
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=af098c5bca&e=e5b1868e14>
> Black Agenda Report, writes, in "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=8848b7f1c6&e=e5b1868e14>
> EZ Pass — Tip Of The Road Privatization Vacuum Cleaner," that trade
> associations and lobby groups are working toward 'pay-to-use' roads in the
> near future. Roads will be privatized or become public-private partnerships.
> If we are unable to pay, we cannot use the roads or may even lose our
> license. Dixon points out that under the Obama administration toll lanes
> were allowed on more existing highways to advance toward privatized roads.
>
> This is the essence of privatization today: turn a public good into a profit
> center for Wall Street. US economic policy has created a wealth class that
> is grotesquely wealthy and under-taxed so it has the money that the
> government needs to provide public services. This forces the government to
> borrow money from or sell a public service to the privateers or to create a
> public-private partnership (disguised corporate welfare and crony
> capitalism) in order to provide essential services.
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Health Over Profit for Everyone
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c042a9821e&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> This model was applied during the Obama years on a mega-level to health
> care. Rather than treating universal health care as
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=68ff5cd02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> a public service and expanding and improving Medicare to cover everyone,
> Obama worked with corrupt healthcare profiteers – the insurance and
> pharmaceutical industries and health care investors – for a law that
> benefited them. We described Obamacare as "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=dc52b25d49&e=e5b1868e14>
> the biggest insurance scam in history" in 2013, predicting it would lead to
> increased premiums, out-of-pocket costs and deductibles and decreased
> coverage while making the medical industry wealthy – this is exactly what
> happened.
>
> The Market Rules While Public Services Are Cut
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Stop TPP, TiSA and TTIP protest Earth Rising
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eece35bf4c&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> Under Obama and previous presidents, the market was king while public
> services were diminished or disappeared. Obama is infamous for his triad of
> trade agreements: the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=78a790604b&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trans-Pacific Partnership, the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c0c5a1fb31&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership and the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=cec82a9cd8&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trade in Services Agreement. The common theme of all three was privatization
> by granting greater power to corporations, making it impossible to regulate
> them, and turning public services into profit centers for big business.
>
> The TPP and TTIP both seem to be dead. It is unclear what the fate of TiSA
> will be under President Trump, but
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fe58a3fcb7&e=e5b1868e14>
> we must not allow it to be completed. Last week Trump said he wants no more
> multi-country trade deals and will pursue one-on-one negotiations where the
> US can demand terms from a smaller country and easily walk away if the
> country refuses.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. by Annette Dubois
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a104796c5f&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=c4c85dc2e0&e=e5b1868e14>
> TiSA is a grave danger. It is an agreement of 52 nations (including all of
> Europe) and from
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=dac8258048&e=e5b1868e14>
> numerous
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b8e33c8747&e=e5b1868e14>
> leaks we
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=69b479aacc&e=e5b1868e14>
> know the thrust of TiSA is privatization of all services. Services are 80
> percent of the US economy and include the postal service, education, health
> care, etc. TiSA creates a one-way street to privatization with incentives to
> push public services to be privatized. Once this is done,they cannot return
> to the public sphere. Recent leaks show that
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f1b644a77b&e=e5b1868e14>
> TiSA negotiators are having problems, but if they make compromises, TiSA may
> still survive.
>
> A major area in the US where we have seen privatization destroying a
> critical public service under the last four presidents is education. The
> damage is expected to increase under the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage2.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b71085fbcf&e=e5b1868e14>
> extremist policies of Secretary
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ad3a463205&e=e5b1868e14>
> DeVos, although
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53a89523e0&e=e5b1868e14>
> she is igniting protest (see
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fb7cdf4db4&e=e5b1868e14>
> here and
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b7c6f180aa&e=e5b1868e14>
> here).
>
> Education activist, Morna McDermott, writes about the path to privatize
> education in "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=5c0a7f4ae9&e=e5b1868e14>
> The Long Game: Where Art Thou Public Education?". She points to the
> extremist "Choices in Education Act," which would open the flood gates of
> privatization schemes like vouchers and charters, but she also points out
> that the Democrat's answer to No Child Left Behind, The Every Student
> Succeeds Act (
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ad5f64dcdb&e=e5b1868e14>
> ESSA), does the same.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Government of the lesser of two evils
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=53c612e02f&e=e5b1868e14>
> Education
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=3751782ac0&e=e5b1868e14>
> 'deform' is rooted in the lesser-evilism of the two-party problem of the
> United States. While both parties clothe their deforms in nice-sounding
> labels, the reality is that both parties are privatizing education so big
> profits can be made off of school budgets while students suffer from a
> deteriorating education system. The privatizers can afford the best Madison
> Avenue propagandists available, but in reality words like '
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=097998172c&e=e5b1868e14>
> education choice' have never served the disadvantaged but play on people's
> desperation and have
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=14d28de8ac&e=e5b1868e14>
> racist roots.
>
> In Baltimore, we may be seeing the end of public education through the
> starvation of public schools. The
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=b55b0f9085&e=e5b1868e14>
> public schools currently have a $130 million shortfall, which is likely to
> mean firing 1,000 educators. Not only will this devastate Baltimore schools,
> it will undermine the Baltimore economy. When you starve a public budget,
> people get desperate, including parents, teachers, students and residents;
> desperation is an opportunity for privatizers to come in and "save the day,"
> a disguise for the privatization, profiteering and destruction of public
> education. Adding to the concerns is that Baltimore "School Choice" advocate
> Jason Botel is now the second in command under DeVos. Will Baltimore be an
> experiment for full privatization of public schools?
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Immigrant rights activists protested the Gates
> Foundation for their support of notorious private prison company GEO Group.
> (Photo: Alex Garland via Presente.org)
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=587f28f096&e=e5b1868e14>
>
>
> This week the
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=fa5619c472&e=e5b1868e14>
> Trump administration moved backward on the issue of private prisons. Obama
> had taken initial steps to stop the use of private prisons, but Attorney
> General Sessions withdrew his order. Private prisons treat inmates poorly,
> whether it is the quality of food or health care, and require high levels of
> occupancy, which encourages more prison sentences.
>
> Another problem with privatization is lack of accountability. Corporations
> often skirt regulations because they know that there aren't enough
> regulators to enforce the rules and that even if they are caught, they only
> have to pay a fine. Their lobbyists work to weaken or stop regulations to
> protect the environment, workers or consumers because they interfere with
> their profits. Trump's cabinet consists of
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=7f3d08ae41&e=e5b1868e14>
> people appointed to federal agencies that they have been critical of or want
> to see destroyed. And regulations are being repealed, which will lead to
> expensive environmental and other types of damage.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. No DAPL Protect the Water
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=6bea735841&e=e5b1868e14>
> The Trump administration has moved forward on the Dakota Access Pipeline and
> the Keystone Pipeline without environmental reviews. If one pipeline
> explodes or has a significant leak, the cost in damage to water, land and
> air will be massive. Cutting corners for profit will almost assuredly cost
> the government more money in the future.
>
> The bottom line on privatization is well described in
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=eb0087320b&e=e5b1868e14>
> an article on public-private partnerships by Pete Dolack. He points out we
> can expect to see a lot more public-private partnerships under Trump,
> especially for his infrastructure plans. This is just another form of crony
> capitalism which will result in public money going to the wealthiest
> investors. Trump will cut taxes on the wealthiest and build infrastructure
> with private dollars, meaning profit as well as tax credits go to investors,
> not the public. Dolack writes:
>
> "The contractor, of course, expects a profit from the arrangement. The
> government doesn't — and thus corporate expectation of profits requires that
> revenues be increased and expenses must be cut. Less services and fewer
> employees means more profit for the contractor, and because the contractor
> is a private enterprise there's no longer public accountability.
>
> "Public-private partnerships are nothing more than a variation on
> straightforward schemes to sell off public assets below cost, with working
> people having to pay more for reduced quality of service."
>
> What Is the Alternative?
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Privatization-Equals-Corruption1
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=ba7a95068b&e=e5b1868e14>
> There are alternatives to privatization, de-regulation and other policies
> that funnel tax dollars and profits to the wealthy. Author
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a78ac6e3a7&e=e5b1868e14>
> John Boik urges us to look at how we create "an economy of meaning," which
> begins with a rarely asked question: What economic system designs, out of
> all conceivable ones, might be among the best at helping us meet real needs?
> This question expands our thinking and creativity about the economy. It is
> not limited to a capitalism vs. socialism. It is not just about creating
> jobs, but about creating jobs people want to do. By making well-being
> central to the economy, new approaches will be tried and, if they work,
> expanded. The current economy does not work for most people. As we re-think
> the economy, the centrality of well-being is a good foundation.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Privatization of water protest
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=f8cf77659d&e=e5b1868e14>
> In a chapter for the book "
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=a580498d26&e=e5b1868e14>
> Moving Beyond Capitalism",
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=37e01cfffe&e=e5b1868e14>
> we suggested the commons as the antidote to predatory capitalism.
> Concentrated wealth is derived by taking from the commons for personal gain
> in an undemocratic way. Public goods, lands and services are part of the
> commons that we should be sharing. Doing so would reverse the wealth divide
> and build our mutual prosperity, e.g. all should have equity in healthcare,
> access to the Internet and high quality education. Further, organizing and
> governing the commons requires group decision-making, which will help to
> reinvent democracy.
>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> Image removed by sender. Commons not Capitalism
> <http://popularresistance.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413&id=827445aa90&e=e5b1868e14>
> These are times of radical change. We are in the midst of an evolution. The
> old world is one of concentrated economic power that creates inequality and
> corrupt, hierarchical governance to serve concentrated wealth through
> exploitation of people and planet. There is another way. We've reached a
> tipping point, as evidenced by the worldwide revolt through Occupy, the Arab
> Spring, the Indignados and other movements.
>
> We can reverse the trend toward privatization and inequality by claiming the
> commons for our mutual prosperity. We can build a more just, sustainable
> and democratic world, a world based on the common good, in which people work
> together to solve common problems and create an equitable economy that
> betters the lives for all.
>
>
> NOTE: Popular Resistance is able to provide movement news and resources
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