ger32's JumboTweets
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Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
goo.gl/OGR5O1 -
Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
goo.gl/OGR5O1 -
"...scholarly journals have also reported frauds. One case in point is Andrew Wakefield’s false assertion of a link between vaccines and autism in children. Wakefield published this report in 1998, based on fabricated and unethically obtained data. The journal the Lancet fully retracted it in 2010, but even today this false claim lives on."
goo.gl/OQsGJW
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any. So READ THIS, you Trump voter--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/04/12/update-trump-voters
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any, so READ you gullible Trump-voter--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
https://www.jumbotweet.com/users/index
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any, so READ, you gullible Trump-voter--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
www.jumbotweet.com/users/index" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://***www.jumbotweet.com/users/index
(To use link, copy, paste to address bar and remove ***)
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any. So READ, you Trump-voter--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
www.jumbotweet.com/users/index" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">https://***www.jumbotweet.com/users/index
(To use link, copy, paste to address bar and remove astrisks ***)
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
https://www.jumbotweet.com/users/index
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gdn: This describes Don the Con better than any--
1. He said he wouldn’t bomb Syria. You bought it. Then he bombed Syria.
2. He said he’d build a wall along the border with Mexico. You bought it. Now his secretary of homeland security says “It’s unlikely that we will build a wall.”
3. He said he’d clean the Washington swamp. You bought it. Then he brought into his administration more billionaires, CEOs, and Wall Street moguls than in any administration in history, to make laws that will enrich their businesses.
4. He said he’d repeal Obamacare and replace it with something “wonderful.” You bought it. Then he didn’t.
5. He said he’d use his business experience to whip the White House into shape. You bought it. Then he created the most chaotic, dysfunctional, back-stabbing White House in modern history, in which no one is in charge.
6. He said he’d release his tax returns, eventually. You bought it. He hasn’t, and says he never will.
7. He said he’d divest himself from his financial empire, to avoid any conflicts of interest. You bought it. He remains heavily involved in his businesses, makes money off of foreign dignitaries staying at his Washington hotel, gets China to give the Trump brand trademark and copyright rights, manipulates the stock market on a daily basis, and has more conflicts of interest than can even be counted.
8. He said Clinton was in the pockets of Goldman Sachs, and would do whatever they said. You bought it. Then he put half a dozen Goldman Sachs executives in positions of power in his administration.
9. He said he’d surround himself with all the best and smartest people. You bought it. Then he put Betsy DeVos, opponent of public education, in charge of education; Jeff Sessions, opponent of the Voting Rights Act, in charge of voting rights; Ben Carson, opponent of the Fair Housing Act, in charge of fair housing; Scott Pruitt, climate change denier, in charge of the Environmental Protection Agency; and Russian quisling Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State.
10. He said he’d faithfully execute the law. You bought it. Then he said his predecessor, Barack Obama, spied on him, without any evidence of Obama ever doing so, in order to divert attention from the FBI’s investigation into collusion between his campaign and Russian operatives to win the election.
11. He said he knew more about strategy and terrorism than the generals did. You bought it. Then he green lighted a disastrous raid in Yemen- even though his generals said it would be a terrible idea. This raid resulted in the deaths of a Navy SEAL, an 8-year old American girl, and numerous civilians. The actual target of the raid escaped, and no useful intel was gained
12. He called Barack Obama “the vacationer-in-Chief” and accused him of playing more rounds of golf than Tiger Woods. He promised to never be the kind of president who took cushy vacations on the taxpayer’s dime, not when there was so much important work to be done. You bought it. He has by now spent more taxpayer money on vacations than Obama did in the first 3 years of his presidency. Not to mention all the money taxpayers are spending protecting his family, including his two sons who travel all over the world on Trump business.
13. He called CNN, the Washington Post and the New York Times “fake news” and said they were his enemy. You bought it. Now he gets his information from Fox News, Breitbart, Gateway Pundit, and InfoWars.
More to come.
https://www.jumbotweet.com/users/index
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"Last year, President Obama’s labor secretary, Thomas Perez, successfully issued the fiduciary rule to ensure that financial advisers provide advice that is untainted by conflicts of interest. The rule is scheduled to go into effect next month."
"It’s estimated that current and future retirees lose $17 billion each year thanks to advisers who are not acting in our best interests." Source--EPI.
#45 and GOP are nulling graph 1 so that graph 2 keeps happening. -
"...the Constitution was very clear about where a supermajority was needed. There were only five instances in the original Constitution: ratification of a treaty, override of a veto, votes of impeachment, passage of the Constitutional amendment, and expulsion of a member." gdn: The Pugs, of course, bring us back to the constitution re SCOTUS only when it packs the court in their favour.
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How the Donald Came to Rule
"What made Trump unacceptable to the Republican establishment and their corporate backers was not merely his unabashed racism and misogyny, or his casual references to his penis size. Trump champions an economic nationalism that rejects central tenets of the bipartisan neoliberal agenda that has impoverished segments of the middle and working classes. Capital was uneasy with Trump’s stance on immigration and the federal debt — he floated the idea of trying to persuade creditors to accept less than full payment on loans to the US government."
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/03/how-the-donald-came-to-rule/ -
gdn: The following is the result of Republican and Republican-lite (Dems) economic policies beginning with Reagan on, IMHO--
"In 1995, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, there were 43,115 deaths from the disease and its complications. Twenty years later, our current opiate epidemic has passed that gruesome marker, racking up 52,404 deaths. Today, opioid-related deaths outnumber those resulting from car accidents or guns.
According to Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton, these are “deaths of despair,” and combined with deaths from alcohol and suicide they have resulted in an alarming increase in the mortality rate of white, non-Hispanic Americans in mid-life. ..."
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[The so-called] free market. But it’s not the kind of free market that Adam Smith and the classical “free market” economists had in mind. The rentier sector’s lobbyists have taken over peoples’ mind. This is what Killing the Host is all about. It’s the basic intellectual dynamic of parasitism…. That is what the parasitic sector, the FIRE [FinanceInsuranceRealEstate] sector, has done in modern economies. It makes Wall Street the planning center, not the elected government. That’s how the rentiers have taken over the economy.
goo.gl/DY7Pqi
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[The so-called] free market. But it’s not the kind of free market that Adam Smith and the classical “free market” economists had in mind. The rentier sector’s lobbyists have taken over peoples’ mind. This is what Killing the Host is all about. It’s the basic intellectual dynamic of parasitism. In nature, parasites don’t simply attach themselves to a host and suck out blood, or take the surplus in an economy. In order to do that, they have to numb the host. They need an anesthetic so that the host doesn’t realize it’s being bitten. Then, biological parasites in nature have an enzyme that they use to take over the brain. The brain of the host is tricked into thinking that the parasite is a part of its body, to be protected. That is what the parasitic sector, the FIRE sector, has done in modern economies. It makes Wall Street the planning center, not the elected government. That’s how the rentiers have taken over the economy.
goo.gl/DY7Pqi
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"If you believe this “meritocracy” patter talk, you’re not going to resent predatory wealth. You’re going to resent yourself. The oligarchy has made debtors and the middle class subject to a Stockholm Syndrome. They blame themselves. They think that “If only we can cut taxes on rich people like Donald Trump wants to do, they can have enough money to hire us and we’ll get richer.”
But that’s not what the rich do with their money. They don’t hire workers here. They get richer by taking over a company, firing the workers, downsizing it, wiping out the pension fund, and moving their production to non-unionized Indonesia, Vietnam or some other low-wage economy.
goo.gl/DY7Pqi -
What a farce. The Great Recession of 2008 was a direct result of deregulation, so the solution is -- more deregulation? The fact that the American people are swallowing this intellectual swill is a tragedy. Look, here's the facts -- we've had 3 periods of deregulation: the late 1800's (followed by the biggest economic collapse in the country's history up until that time in the 1890's); the 1920s (followed by the Great Derpession); and the thirty years prior to the great recession. Three tries, three failures. In each case, income got concentrated in the top 1%, and middle class consumers didn't have enough buying power to keep the economy growing. It's really simple -- if most of the consumers don't have enough money to buy stuff, the economy collapses; and when you deregulate, wealth gets concentrated at the top. Why can't we the people grasp this simple obvious fact and see deregulation for what it is: a pretext for weakening government so the uber rich can rob us blind?
Richard (RJ) Eskow
Host of 'The Breakdown,' Writer, and Senior Fellow, Campaign for America's Future
The Dumbest 'Bipartisan' Move Since Repealing Glass-Steagall
Posted 22-03-2012 11:35 PM EDT -
Gloria Steinem, the liberal activist and writer, wrote in an email that she had grown tired of “false equivalency or even-handedness” from news organizations, which she blamed for aiding Mr. Trump’s rise.
“I watch MSNBC for Joy Reid, Chris Hayes, Rachel Maddow and Lawrence O’Donnell because I trust them as journalists,” Ms. Steinem wrote, adding, “A journalist’s job is not to be balanced; it’s to be accurate.”
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Trump’s Former Campaign Adviser Throws Him Under The Bus On Ukraine (DETAILS)
By Natalie Thongrit - March 3, 2017
“What is so noteworthy about Gordon’s recent comments is the fact that they directly contradict President Trump, who said in July of last year that he had nothing to do with the changes regarding Ukraine.”
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"...U.S. military officials have told Reuters that Trump approved the raid – the first operation he approved as president – “without sufficient intelligence, ground support or adequate backup preparations.” He green-lit the mission over dinner at the White House residence, and while the raid was underway, Trump did not go to the Situation Room and did not monitor the developments in real time."
goo.gl/AjxDqy
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When Canadian Scientists Were Muzzled by Their Government
Starting in 2007, shortly after Mr. Harper became prime minister, new rules were issued that prevented federal scientists from speaking freely with the media about their research without clearing it with public relations specialists or having an administrative “minder” accompany the scientists on interviews or to scientific conferences. More often, the government would simply deny permission for a scientist to speak with reporters if that person’s findings ran counter to Mr. Harper’s political agenda. Inquiries from journalists became mired in an obstinate bureaucracy, and media coverage of government climate research dropped 80 percent after the rules were imposed.
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gdn: Here is a new slant on jobs and robots---
"We need to give the robot scare a rest. Robots are not leading to mass joblessness and are not the cause of wage stagnation or growing wage inequality. Recently, the New York Times referred to the robot scare as a “distraction from real problems and real solutions.” Instead, we should focus on policy choices that lead to things that truly threaten workers and their families like eroding labor standards, declining unionization, elevated unemployment, unbalanced globalization, and declining top tax rates."
goo.gl/kXCfdb -
gdn: Here is a new slant on jobs and robots---
"We need to give the robot scare a rest. Robots are not leading to mass joblessness and are not the cause of wage stagnation or growing wage inequality. Recently, the New York Times referred to the robot scare as a “distraction from real problems and real solutions.” Instead, we should focus on policy choices that lead to things that truly threaten workers and their families like eroding labor standards, declining unionization, elevated unemployment, unbalanced globalization, and declining top tax rates."
goo.gl/kXCfdb -
"We need to give the robot scare a rest. Robots are not leading to mass joblessness and are not the cause of wage stagnation or growing wage inequality. Recently, the New York Times referred to the robot scare as a “distraction from real problems and real solutions.” Instead, we should focus on policy choices that lead to things that truly threaten workers and their families like eroding labor standards, declining unionization, elevated unemployment, unbalanced globalization, and declining top tax rates."
goo.gl/kXCfdb -
"Public-private partnerships are one of the surest ways of shoveling money into the gaping maws of corporate wallets, used, with varying names, by neoliberal governments around the world, particularly in Europe and North America. The result has been disastrous — public services and infrastructure maintenance is consistently more expensive after privatization. Cuts to wages for workers who remain on the job and increased use of low-wage subcontractors are additional features of these privatizations."
goo.gl/oAJvgc
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gdn: Net Neutrality in danger—
"After Donald Trump’s election, Ajit Pai, then a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), boasted that he was “more confident than ever” that net neutrality—the concept that all Internet traffic is treated equally—was about to end, that its “days are numbered.” "
Source: The Nation newsletter -
"Those Republicans who stand by watching all of this, silently, in the hope that in return for their obeisance they will get away with forcing a right-wing agenda of privatization, deregulation, and inequality upon the nation, should keep in mind that when survivors look back upon a time of acute crisis, those who are remembered are not the spineless and opportunistic who hoped to snag a piece of the action. Rather, it is the men and women who rose in defiance and said this betrayal of what my country is supposed to be will not stand." Bill Moyer and M. Winship
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"You know, before we all started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor. They would say I'll paint your house.... In the old days that's what people would do to get health care with their doctors. Doctors are very sympathetic people. I'm not backing down from that system."
A 'GOP canditate's solution for healthcare, 2010. Source: DailyKos dot com -
"...The best way to be sure that 2017 is not 1934 is to act as though it were. We must learn and relearn that age’s necessary lessons: that meek submission is the most short-sighted of policies; that waiting for the other, more vulnerable group to protest first will only increase the isolation of us all. We must refuse to think that if we play nice and don’t make trouble, our group won’t be harmed. Calm but consistent opposition shared by a broad front of committed and constitutionally-minded protesters—it’s easy to say, fiendishly hard to do, and necessary to accomplish if we are to save the beautiful music of American democracy."
goo.gl/lWX1Sr
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gdn: As to the following, remember, Gorbachev was promised NATO would not expand—
"I think it's highly unlikely Putin is going to change from a shark into a goldfish. We are going to see sharklike behavior continue around the periphery of NATO."
JAMES G. STAVRIDIS, a retired American Navy admiral who was NATO supreme commander from 2009 to 2013.
Source: NYTimes newsletter
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"There are solutions to Trump. They involve reasoned strategizing and patient focus on issues people actually care about. Whatever those solutions are, venerating the intelligence community, begging for its intervention, and equating their dark and dirty assertions as Truth are most certainly not among them. Doing that cannot possibly achieve any good, and is already doing much harm."
goo.gl/KeBKpM
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"THERE IS A REAL DANGER here that this maneuver can harshly backfire, to the great benefit of Trump and to the great detriment of those who want to oppose him. If any of the significant claims in this “dossier” turn out to be provably false — such as Cohen’s trip to Prague — many people will conclude, with Trump’s encouragement, that large media outlets (CNN and BuzzFeed) and anti-Trump factions inside the government (CIA) are deploying “Fake News” to destroy him. In the eyes of many people, that will forever discredit — render impotent — future journalistic exposés that are based on actual, corroborated wrongdoing."
goo.gl/KeBKpM
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"It is not hard to understand why the CIA preferred Clinton over Trump. Clinton was critical of Obama for restraining the CIA’s proxy war in Syria and was eager to expand that war, while Trump denounced it. Clinton clearly wanted a harder line than Obama took against the CIA’s long-standing foes in Moscow, while Trump wanted improved relations and greater cooperation. In general, Clinton defended and intended to extend the decadeslong international military order on which the CIA and Pentagon’s preeminence depends, while Trump — through a still-uncertain mix of instability and extremist conviction — posed a threat to it."
goo.gl/KeBKpM
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"From the German occupation headquarters at the Hotel D'Angleterre came the decree: ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARMBAND WITH A STAR OF DAVID.
That night the underground transmitted a message to all Danes. 'From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.' The next day in Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing a Star of David. The following day the Germans rescinded the order."
(gdn: we need to do something like this for the Muslims, maybe)
goo.gl/kQeXgx
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LONDON — Europe, the soil on which Fascism took root, is watching the rise of Donald Trump with dismay. Contempt for the excesses of America is a European reflex, but when the United States seems tempted by a latter-day Mussolini, smugness in London, Paris and Berlin gives way to alarm. Europe knows that democracies can collapse.
goo.gl/bUAkjQ -
gdn: Free Tuition for Under $125000 families in NY
"Under the Excelsior Scholarship, described as the first of its kind in the nation, students whose families make $125,000 or less per year would be eligible to attend all public universities in New York for free. More than 940,000 middle class families and individuals would qualify for the program, according to a statement from Cuomo's office."
goo.gl/eybdqV -
". It’s impossible (or at least dishonest) to present the evidence for Russian responsibility for hacking the Democrats without using language like this--possibly, appears, connects, indicates. The question, then, is this: Do we want to make major foreign policy decisions with a belligerent nuclear power based on suggestions alone, no matter how strong?"
goo.gl/00ih9g
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American capitalism as a supposedly “free market”, “private enterprise” system is a myth. In reality, it is, by contrast, a centrally planned, subsidized support system for elite profit-making. Massive US military spending year-on-year is crucial to the support system for this kind of economic parasitism. Logically then an arms race induced against Russia would be a welcome boon for the military-industrial complex of corporate manufacturers, Wall Street bankers and mega-rich shareholders.
goo.gl/olskHs
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"...the Trumpsters have vowed to dismantle various government programs. They are determined to severely limit the protection of labor, replace public schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, and drop regulatory protections in the health, safety and environmental fields, among others. Acting without the requisite legal authority is of little concern to Mr. Trump.” (gdn: And to think they lost the election by 3,000,000 votes)
goo.gl/F9iqWs
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"...the Trumpsters have vowed to dismantle various government programs. They are determined to severely limit the protection of labor, replace public schools with taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, and drop regulatory protections in the health, safety and environmental fields, among others. Acting without the requisite legal authority is of little concern to Mr. Trump."
goo.gl/F9iqWs
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gdn: In the U.S., if your bank fails, your bank’s derivative “gambling” debtors will be paid off before you are given your deposits.
“In principle, depositors are the most senior creditors in a bank. However, that was changed in the 2005 bankruptcy law, which made derivatives liabilities most senior. Considering the extreme levels of derivatives liabilities that many large banks have, and the opportunity to stuff any bank with derivatives liabilities in the last moment, other creditors could easily find there is nothing left for them at all.”
goo.gl/exnpe5
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ICYMI folks!
Why didn’t they challenge Barack Obama’s signing into law Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act? Section 1021 overturns the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prohibited the military from acting as a domestic police force. The section also permits the military to carry out extraordinary rendition of U.S. citizens, strip them of due process and hold them indefinitely in military detention centers.
Source: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/waiting_for_the_barbarians_201611271 -
The secret GOP plan--a shocker!: During the Reagan era, a friend and former colleague, a professor of American history, was invited to the deliberations of a Washington think-tank that provided policy direction for the Republican Party. As they discussed growing the debt and increasing the deficit, he was flabbergasted: “Are you not the party of balanced budgets and debt elimination?” The reply was unequivocal, “Our goal is to grow the deficit as much as possible in order to create political space to eliminate government-funded programming. Until then, we want high deficits while lobbying for a balanced budget — and promoting social program cuts as the only solution.”
To create this useful deficit, tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporate sectors would be dramatically increased, especially to the banking, energy and military segments. In short, one would implement a transfer of the state’s revenue supply obligations from the wealthiest to the poor and middle classes in order to permit an even greater transfer of wealth from the middle classes to the rich thereafter.
https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorialopinion/2011/08/12/apocalyptic_crisis_budgeting.html -
gdn: America’s left will have to be stronger than Germany’s was—
The German left was largely powerless to act against the Nazi assumption of power. This was a cause for great concern and international debate at the time: how could fascism take power in Germany, the birthplace of Marxism and a country endowed with powerful trade unions, a strong Social Democratic Party and the largest Communist Party outside of the Soviet Union? How was Hitler able to take power without causing a civil war, or even a general strike? How could both the SPD and KPD be destroyed without massive resistance?
goo.gl/rNQeMN -
You mentioned Trump, and you’ve probably heard the argument, or the concern, that fake news somehow helped him get elected. What do you make of that?
My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact.
goo.gl/bI7PX2 -
Steve Bannan said this.“So I think the discussion of, should we put a cap on wealth creation and distribution? It’s something that should be at the heart of every Christian that is a capitalist — “What is the purpose of whatever I’m doing with this wealth? What is the purpose of what I’m doing with the ability that God has given us, that divine providence has given us to actually be a creator of jobs and a creator of wealth?”” Go figure!
goo.gl/Yr77Cb
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But not all is lost. Working people won on Tuesday in many ways. Across the country, people stood up for public goods, especially education and transit.
Californians said “no” to tax cuts for the wealthy, protecting $4 billion in funding for public education and health care for children.
Massachusetts voters overwhelmingly rejected a major expansion of privately operated, but publicly funded charter schools.
In Georgia, voters rejected allowing the state to shut down “failing schools” or turn them into charter schools.
Nearly $200 billion in transit infrastructure investment was on the ballot in races across the country, and over two-thirds of those ballot measures passed.
Source: "Donald Cohen, In the Public Interest" <donald@inthepublicinterest.org> -
gdn: This is why Dems lost:
Democrats have occupied the White House for sixteen of the last twenty-four years, and for four of those years had control of both houses of congress. But in that time they failed to reverse the decline in working-class wages and jobs.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama ardently pushed for free trade agreements without providing millions of blue-collar workers who thereby lost their jobs means of getting new ones that paid at least as well.
goo.gl/cIjmHW -
I urge everyone to ask to be on this site’s mailing list:
goo.gl/Iw45TH
PUBLIC BANKS:
* Make affordable loans to small businesses, farmers, government entities, and students
* Save taxpayers up to 50% on critical infrastructure like bridges and trains and schools
* Eliminate billions in bank fees and money management fees for cities and states
* Support a vibrant community banking sector
* Enable sustainable prosperity -
gdn: According to this, Edward Snowden would question what Assange is doing with anti-Clinton leaks:
["Democratizing information has never been more vital, and @Wikileaks has helped. But their hostility to even modest curation is a mistake."
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) July 28, 2016]
gdn: For wikileaks to expose a government's action MAY be okay but to expose political action is not.
goo.gl/iPnA44 -
gdn: For Americans, this should be embarrassing--
"Illiteracy is the norm at those “slumlike” schools and others in Michigan’s biggest city, according to the plaintiffs. The facilities are decrepit and unsafe. The first thing some teachers do each morning is clean up rodent feces before their students arrive. In some cases, teachers buy the books and school supplies, even the toilet paper."
goo.gl/eP7YOl
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“It is not likely that the use of a nuclear weapon first by either the United States or Russia would lead to the other nation backing down from a conflict,” he said. “Almost certainly the other nation would respond in kind. In short, there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war.”
goo.gl/KBFnDh -
“It is not likely that the use of a nuclear weapon first by either the United States or Russia would lead to the other nation backing down from a conflict,” he said. “Almost certainly the other nation would respond in kind. In short, there is no such thing as a limited nuclear war.”
goo.gl/KBFnDh -
Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz has reiterated his opposition to the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), saying on Tuesday that President Barack Obama's push to get the trade deal passed during the upcoming lame-duck session of Congress is "outrageous" and "absolutely wrong."
goo.gl/eUPmOa -
If bad ideas are not allowed to die, good ideas slip into obscurity. Today, one of those buried ideas is enjoying a well-deserved revival: basic income—the idea that every citizen is entitled to an income sufficient to cover basic needs.
goo.gl/SoEAOc -
Basic economics tells us that the more charter schools that exist in the public school "market," the more difficult it is for public school teachers to maintain strong unions, pensions, tenure rights, and bargaining power.
goo.gl/oz5O6R -
"Cuba has shown it only takes justice and social development to fight drugs. In our country, the crime rate per 100,000 people is one of the lowest in the world. No other country in the hemisphere can exhibit such low rates of violence. It is known that, despite the blockade, no other country can boast our high education levels.”—Fidel Castro
http://goo.gl/z6mRVo
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gdn: I support Clinton but concerned here—
Clinton’s role in supporting the coup in Honduras is a reminder that the Middle East is not the only part of the world in which she is willing to set aside principles of international law and human rights to advance perceived U.S. economic and strategic interests. Indeed, it may be a troubling indication of the kind of foreign policies she would pursue as president.
http://goo.gl/y1a9EK
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""Young men make up 42 percent of all of Europe's asylum seekers in 2015." That's right: 42 percent of first-time asylum seekers in 2015 were men aged 18 to 34. And the percentage of asylum seekers who were women in that age cohort? Eleven percent.
That imbalance — much larger in some countries — points to a future in which considerable numbers of young men will find it extremely difficult to find spouses. And that's a serious problem. As a leading expert on the topic put it a few months ago in an important article for Politico:
[S]ocieties with extremely skewed sex ratios are more unstable even without jihadi ideologues in their midst. Numerous empirical studies have shown that sex ratios correlate significantly with violence and property crime — the higher the sex ratio, the worse the crime rate. [Politico]
"Even without jihadi ideologues in their midst.""
Source: How Angela Merkel imperilled Europe's future by Damon Linker at TheWeek (dot) com
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"...if you are someone who wants to stop Trump or Brexit, your goal should be to communicate effectively with the people who believe it is in their interest to support Trump or Brexit. I think in general there is no effort on the part of media elites to communicate with those people and do anything other than tell them that they are primitive, racist, and stupid. And if the message being sent is that you are primitive, racist, and stupid, and not that you have been fucked over in ways that are really bad and need to be rectified, of course those people are not going to be receptive to the message coming from the people who view them with contempt and scorn. I think that is why Brexit won, and I think that is the real danger of Trump winning."
Source: Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters?
And in their rush to condemn Trump, are journalists betraying their values? Glenn Greenwald says yes to both.
By Isaac Chotiner at Slate (dot) com -
"...if you are someone who wants to stop Trump or Brexit, your goal should be to communicate effectively with the people who believe it is in their interest to support Trump or Brexit. I think in general there is no effort on the part of media elites to communicate with those people and do anything other than tell them that they are primitive, racist, and stupid. And if the message being sent is that you are primitive, racist, and stupid, and not that you have been fucked over in ways that are really bad and need to be rectified, of course those people are not going to be receptive to the message coming from the people who view them with contempt and scorn. I think that is why Brexit won, and I think that is the real danger of Trump winning."
Source: Is the Elite Media Failing to Reach Trump Voters?
And in their rush to condemn Trump, are journalists betraying their values? Glenn Greenwald says yes to both.
By Isaac Chotiner -
(gdn: Privitization of Pubic responsibilities is not working; it is just lining private pockets and hurting public needs and public budgets)
"Later this year, we’re releasing a report on the ways in which the decades-long experiment of privatizing public goods and services has helped fuel America’s recent historic inequality. From Medicaid to public transit, education, and water, privatization often hurts those that need public goods the most. We hope the report helps us work together to restore the very sense of “community” that sustains a healthy and equitable society.
Quality public goods and services are a must-have in such a society. They should be controlled by us, not corporations."
Source: InThePublicInterest newsletter -
(gdn: Privitization of Pubic responsibilities is not working; it is just lining private pockets and hurting public needs and public budgets)
"Later this year, we’re releasing a report on the ways in which the decades-long experiment of privatizing public goods and services has helped fuel America’s recent historic inequality. From Medicaid to public transit, education, and water, privatization often hurts those that need public goods the most. We hope the report helps us work together to restore the very sense of “community” that sustains a healthy and equitable society.
Quality public goods and services are a must-have in such a society. They should be controlled by us, not corporations."
Source: InThePublicInterest newsletter -
gdn: We must not disagree with Trump on the wrong things—
“Democrats and their allies have failed to acknowledge that Trump’s opposition to sending arms to Ukraine is consistent with the Obama administration’s position. Nor have they grappled with the fact that President Obama has also characterized some of our European allies, accurately, as “free riders.” And while Democrats have eagerly promoted the rumor that Russia is meddling in the election to help Trump win, many U.S. intelligence officials remain skeptical. As one official told The Post, “We have not drawn any evidentiary connection to any Russian intelligence service and [the DNC hack] — none.””
https://goo.gl/6T9Jaj -
gdn: After cops arrest protestors they give their money to credit card companies that then become debit cards thru which the released protester gets the money returned with exorbitant fees. This is another new low for the financial industry and must be stopped.
The Financial Firm That Cornered the Market on Jails
Thousands of arrestees a year are forced into get-out-of-jail-broke cards that are loaded up with deceptive fees.
By Arun Gupta
https://goo.gl/KjddWQ
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"Tiffany Doe herself says that she is in mortal fear of Mr. Trump to this day:
I am coming forward to swear to the truthfulness of the physical and sexual abuse that I personally witnessed of minor females at the hands of Mr. Trump and Mr. Epstein . . . I swear to these facts under the penalty for perjury even though I fully understand that the life of myself and my family is now in grave danger."
Source: Why The New Child Rape Case Filed Against Donald Trump Should Not Be Ignored by Lisa Bloom Legal analyst for NBC News and Avvo, attorney and bestselling author
http://goo.gl/ss8lrh -
gdn: a better economic world is possible--
“During the first four years of the ongoing European crisis, the report shows that cooperatives actually created a net increase in jobs. Employment in Italian cooperatives increased by 8 percent between 2007 and 2011. Furthermore, this “anti-cyclical” performance appears to be “caused primarily by the creation of new cooperatives.” In other words, as the global economy crumbled, people in Italy turned to cooperatives for a way forward.
As confidence in the current economic system continues to erode—with 70 percent of Americans believing the economy is rigged against them—we should pay close attention to the lessons Italy can teach us about how cooperatives can be a part of an alternative.”
http://goo.gl/WJ6Shn
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.....the big money behind the recent push for legalization has come, not from a grassroots movement, but from a few very wealthy individuals with links to Big Ag and Big Pharma....
...Monsanto now appears to be developing genetically modified (GMO) forms of cannabis, with the intent of cornering the market with patented GMO seeds just as it did with GMO corn and GMO soybeans. For that, the plant would need to be legalized but still tightly enough controlled that it could be captured by big corporate interests.
http://goo.gl/bI9BTS -
“…our [American] Democracy has fallen. We have been taken over; defeated; our voices neutered; our freedoms trampled; our democracy vanquished.
No invading force accomplished this; no jackboots echoed across our republic; no alien flag was raised above our lands. Not a single shot was fired by our vaunted military to halt this takeover. No, this was a quiet coup, accomplished from within, and conducted in stealth….the Oligarchy taken over the US.”
http://goo.gl/81UWli
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“…our [American] Democracy has fallen. We have been taken over; defeated; our voices neutered; our freedoms trampled; our democracy vanquished.
No invading force accomplished this; no jackboots echoed across our republic; no alien flag was raised above our lands. Not a single shot was fired by our vaunted military to halt this takeover. No, this was a quiet coup, accomplished from within, and conducted in stealth….the Oligarchy taken over the US.”
http://goo.gl/81UWli
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“…our [American] Democracy has fallen. We have been taken over; defeated; our voices neutered; our freedoms trampled; our democracy vanquished.
No invading force accomplished this; no jackboots echoed across our republic; no alien flag was raised above our lands. Not a single shot was fired by our vaunted military to halt this takeover. No, this was a quiet coup, accomplished from within, and conducted in stealth….the Oligarchy taken over the US.”
http://goo.gl/81UWli
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gdn: The 1% is winning the class war world wide--
“…In Greece you had a classic situation. A poor, small corner of the European economy, only freshly part of the unified Europe, is overwhelmed by the economic crisis of capitalismÂ’s dissolving itself in 2008. No one in their right mind could have blamed the Greek government or Greek policy for causing that crisis.
However, in the years since 2008, the European rich countries, led by Germany, have beaten into submission the Greek people, making them pay through austerity programs, cut wages, cut government services, all of that, pay a heavy, heavy price for an economic crisis they didnÂ’t cause, and an economic crisis that had already hurt them in the private sector. But now theyÂ’re going to be savaged by the Europeans in the followup as they tried to cope with this crisis. They got away with it, just as you said. Even when the Greek people clearly voted by a majority not to go down the road of austerity, it was forced on them by the French, the Germans, and by their complicity, the British, as well.
That emboldened the old elites that run Europe to believe that they could do pretty much what they want. Fix their broken capitalism on the backs of the mass of people, with cut government services, cut government employment, all of the austerity programs properly, so-called, without worrying about the consequences. And that has proved to be a fatal mistake.”
Source: French Labor Law, Brexit, and Greek Austerity: Class War Against European Workers an Economist Richard Wolff interview by Sharmina Peries, TRNN
(gdn: For full article--copy and search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends including the word “Workers”)
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“Last week, in a live-streamed address to supporters, Sanders declared that the political revolution had in fact just begun.
"We have begun the long and arduous process of transforming America—a fight that will continue tomorrow, next week, next year, and into the future," he said. "My hope is that when future historians look back and described how our country moved forward—into reversing the drift towards oligarchy and how we moved forward in creating a government which represents all of the people not just a few—that they will note that to a significant degree, that that effort began with the political revolution of 2016.””
http://goo.gl/ovPU9F
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“This is where we are today. The US is declining as a global superpower on all fronts, challenged militarily by rival powers and makeshift guerilla insurgencies alike, and eating its own tail economically as the Frankenstein it created tears at the seams.
"The real question is not whether US hegemony is waning," Emmanuel Wallerstein writes in his 2003 The Decline of American Power, "but whether the United States can devise a way to descend gradually, with minimum damage to the world, and to itself.””
http://goo.gl/csQxVv
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Top Democratic donors in the financial industry are threatening revolt after news broke that top Wall Street critic and progressive darling Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is one of the leading candidates for vice president under Hillary Clinton.
An in-depth report published by Politico on Monday cites a dozen interviews with Clinton's Wall Street backers—of which there are many—warning that the coffers will dry up if Warren is chosen.
"If Clinton picked Warren, her whole base on Wall Street would leave her," one top Democratic donor told Politico reporter Ben White.
"They would literally just say, 'We have no qualms with you moving left, we understand all the things you’ve had to do because of Bernie Sanders, but if you are going there with Warren, we just can't trust you, you've killed it,'" added the anonymous bundler, who has reportedly helped raise millions for Clinton.
http://goo.gl/mTKTx0 -
gdn: Much of private profit derives from public funded development—
“…Steve Jobs started with boxes of silicon and wires in a garage and fashioned the first Apple computer. The reality is explained by Mariana Mazzucato: "Everything you can do with an iPhone was government-funded. From the Internet that allows you to surf the Web, to GPS that lets you use Google Maps, to touchscreen display and even the SIRI voice activated system -- all of these things were funded by Uncle Sam through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the Navy, and even the CIA." “
http://goo.gl/yWivUy
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“…Steve Jobs started with boxes of silicon and wires in a garage and fashioned the first Apple computer. The reality is explained by Mariana Mazzucato: "Everything you can do with an iPhone was government-funded. From the Internet that allows you to surf the Web, to GPS that lets you use Google Maps, to touchscreen display and even the SIRI voice activated system -- all of these things were funded by Uncle Sam through the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), NASA, the Navy, and even the CIA." “
http://goo.gl/yWivUy
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“…when Nelson Mandela was released from prison, one of his first acts was to declare:
During all my years in prison, Cuba was an inspiration and Fidel Castro a tower of strength… [Cuban victories] destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor [and] inspired the fighting masses of South Africa … a turning point for the liberation of our continent -- and of my people -- from the scourge of apartheid … What other country can point to a record of greater selflessness than Cuba has displayed in its relations to Africa?”
http://goo.gl/F3yPYe
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gdn: a majority of MUSLIM SPIRITUAL LEADERS must start condemning “Islamic terrorism;” if a West vs Islam war is to be avoided. IMHO.
“Members of the left who claim such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam need to become aware of the issue at hand that is Islamism, and understand the ramifications of evading discussions on it. The Arab world’s moral collapse is the result of decades of fundamentalist Wahhabi indoctrination across the Muslim world which has culminated in the recent rise of Islamic terrorism. Reform must come from within Muslim communities – I can’t stress this enough. An open and frank discussion on the current understanding and interpretation of Islam is much needed. Yes, it’s great to see Muslims in the west condemning the attack and voicing solidarity with the victims and their families, but there still remains a long way to go. The Muslim world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, has become rife with followers of either Arab nationalist anti-west ideologies, or Islamism and Wahhabism, both of which are cesspools for hate.”
Source: As an Arab, the Middle East’s reaction to Orlando left me speechless…By Mohammed Rady at ArabHumanists dot org
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to your browser’s address bar that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends including the word “Rady”)
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gdn: a majority of MUSLIM SPIRITUAL LEADERS must start condemning “Islamic terrorism;” if a West vs Islam war is to be avoided. IMHO.
“Members of the left who claim such terrorism has nothing to do with Islam need to become aware of the issue at hand that is Islamism, and understand the ramifications of evading discussions on it. The Arab world’s moral collapse is the result of decades of fundamentalist Wahhabi indoctrination across the Muslim world which has culminated in the recent rise of Islamic terrorism. Reform must come from within Muslim communities – I can’t stress this enough. An open and frank discussion on the current understanding and interpretation of Islam is much needed. Yes, it’s great to see Muslims in the west condemning the attack and voicing solidarity with the victims and their families, but there still remains a long way to go. The Muslim world, particularly the Middle East and North Africa, has become rife with followers of either Arab nationalist anti-west ideologies, or Islamism and Wahhabism, both of which are cesspools for hate.”
As an Arab, the Middle East’s reaction to Orlando left me speechless…By Mohammed Rady at ArabHumanists dot org
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to your browser’s address bar that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends including the word “Rady”)
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Steve Benen has a useful summary of the growing history of Republicans' "hostage [style of] governing":
* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.
* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
* September 2015: Republicans threaten another shutdown [over Planned Parenthood].
Source:
The Dark Truth Of John Boehner's Resignation
By RETIII at DailyKos website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends including the word “RETIII”)
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Steve Benen has a useful summary of the growing history of Republicans' "hostage governing":
* April 2011: House Republicans threaten a government shutdown unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* July 2011: Republicans create the first-ever debt-ceiling crisis, threatening to default on the nation’s debts unless Democrats accept GOP demands on spending cuts.
* September 2011: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* April 2012: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* December 2012: Republicans spend months refusing to negotiate in the lead up to the so-called “fiscal cliff.”
* January 2013: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* September 2013: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* October 2013: Republicans actually shut down the government.
* February 2014: Republicans raise the specter of another debt-ceiling crisis.
* December 2014: Republicans threaten another shutdown.
* February 2015: Republicans threaten a Department of Homeland Security shutdown.
* September 2015: Republicans threaten another shutdown [over Planned Parenthood].
Source:
The Dark Truth Of John Boehner's Resignation
By RETIII at DailyKos website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends including the word “RETIII”)
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Although Mulroney had hidden the cash payments (totalling $225,000) from tax authorities for six years, his lawyers managed to cut a deal that allowed the former PM to avoid any fines or penalties, and only required him to pay half the taxes he would have paid if he’d obeyed the tax laws — laws that chumps like you and me are legally obliged to obey.
It certainly looked like favouritism to a former PM. But another possibility is now emerging: that’s just the CRA’s standard kid-glove treatment for the wealthy and powerful.
Source:
Different tax rules for wealthy and powerful: McQuaig
By LINDA MCQUAIG Columnist at TheStar website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “Columnist”)
-
However, Taibbi continued:
The maddening thing about the Democrats is that they refuse to see how easy they could have it. If the party threw its weight behind a truly populist platform, if it stood behind unions and prosecuted Wall Street criminals and stopped taking giant gobs of cash from every crooked transnational bank and job-exporting manufacturer in the world, they would win every election season in a landslide.
Source:
As Establishment Lines Up Behind Clinton, Calls Resound to 'Let it Bern'
"The Bernie campaign didn't get this far by deferring to the powerful, and there's no good reason to start now," says Norman Solomon of RootsAction
byDeirdre Fulton, staff writer at CommonDreams website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “writer”)
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Is NASA privately owned?
gdn: A regrettable piece of news to me!!!
NASA likes to say they are federally funded and as far as they will go. but the truth is, they are a privately held federally funded company. They are not a federal agency.
Source: answers website -
Is NASA privately owned?
gdn: An regrettable piece of news to me!!!
NASA likes to say they are federally funded and as far as they will go. but the truth is, they are a privately held federally funded company. They are not a federal agency.
Source: answers website -
gdn: Israel has far, far too much influence on North American politics, in my view, as evidenced by this:
“New York will join 8 others states that have passed anti-BDS [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] laws, which "fundamentally violate first amendment rights," and attempt to "stigmatize and marginalize" supporters of the non-violent movement, said Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada.”
Source:
Ali Abunimah: NY Governor Blacklists BDS to Defend Israeli Apartheid at TheRealNews website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “Apartheid”) -
gdn: Israel has far, far too much influence on North American politics, in my view, as evidenced by this:
“New York will join 8 others states that have passed anti-BDS laws, which "fundamentally violate first amendment rights," and attempt to "stigmatize and marginalize" supporters of the non-violent movement, said Ali Abunimah, co-founder of the Electronic Intifada.”
Source:
Ali Abunimah: NY Governor Blacklists BDS to Defend Israeli Apartheid at TheRealNews website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “Apartheid”)
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“Community-college students, unlike their counterparts at for-profit schools, saw their earnings go up after school.”
The Average Student at a For-Profit College Was Worse Off After Attending By JOSH MITCHELL at wsj website.
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “MITCHELL”)
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gdn: Internet should be un-privatized and made a public utility. Here is why—
“…the biggest problem facing municipal Internet services…the cable companies. When Chattanooga first started planning its municipal network, Comcast sued, saying the service amounted to unfair competition for the company. It lost the suit, but Comcast and other companies have spent millions of dollars on ad campaigns and donations to local politicians in the hope that municipal providers don’t expand more than they already have. The company has a history of supporting politicians opposed to public Internet service and lobbying state legislatures to pass legislation that prevents cities and towns from offering their services outside of their municipal boundaries. Eighteen states now have anti-expansion laws on the books.”
Chattanooga Was a Typical Postindustrial City. Then It Began Offering Municipal Broadband.
By Peter Moskowitz at The Nation website.
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “Moskowitz”)
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“And so voters are likely to be faced with a dismal choice this coming November: a choice between a candidate with a record of odious pronouncements, Trump, versus a candidate with a lousy record, Clinton. Given the options, there are of course reasons to pull the lever for Clinton come November, but she will need to be challenged by a revitalized peace-and-diplomacy movement within her party to counter her hawkish instincts. If the Sanders forces can move her leftward, towards a progressive realism, then all the better. But with apologies to Paul Simon: Any way you look at it, you lose.”
Source: Problem With Hillary Clinton’s Attack on Trump’s Foreign Policy Is… Hillary Clinton
By James Carden at The Nation website
(gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—the word “Source” and ends with “Carden” -
WALL STREET DOESN'T WANT YOU TO KNOW THAT PUBLIC BANKS...
drastically reduce borrowing costs for governments (and the rest of us);
save taxpayers money by eliminating big bank fees;
enable low-cost financing of public infrastructure projects;
support community-based banks;
create jobs and boost Main Street.
PBI is leading the way: join us!
Source: publicbankinginstitute website at .org -
“…under Bush, the IRS slashed the budget for auditing the wealthy, while spending heavily on building new systems to detect the smallest errors for the working class returns.”
Source: If you missed it, the biggest military corruption scandal in decades By Craig234 Wednesday Jun 01, 2016
at dailykos website (gdn: For full article--copy & paste to search that, which follows—Source thru Craig234)
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gdn: Important revelations re Saudi Arabia—
"The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending….
It took several discreet follow-up meetings to iron out all the details, Parsky said. But at the end of months of negotiations, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country’s Treasury purchases stay “strictly secret,” …
Source:
The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret by Andrea Wong at Bloomberg website
(for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source) -
gdn: Important revelations re Saudi Arabia—
The basic framework was strikingly simple. The U.S. would buy oil from Saudi Arabia and provide the kingdom military aid and equipment. In return, the Saudis would plow billions of their petrodollar revenue back into Treasuries and finance America’s spending….
It took several discreet follow-up meetings to iron out all the details, Parsky said. But at the end of months of negotiations, there remained one small, yet crucial, catch: King Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud demanded the country’s Treasury purchases stay “strictly secret,” …
Source:
The Untold Story Behind Saudi Arabia’s 41-Year U.S. Debt Secret by Andrea Wong at Bloomberg website
(for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source) -
“The nation’s biggest banks are bigger than ever, with a greater concentration of assets than before the crisis. Compensation on Wall Street has rebounded to record levels. There have been no real legal, economic, or political consequences for the senior executives of the financial firms that crashed the economy. . . . And, Wall Street and its allies in Congress continue to wage a fierce, well-funded, rear guard action against financial reform.”
Source:
A new campaign to hold Wall Street accountable emerges By Katrina vanden Heuvel May 31 at 8:07 AM Washington Post website
-
For Stephen Hawking, the world-renowned expert in theoretical physics and cosmology, the success of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is a mystery.
Hawking called Trump “a demagogue who seems to appeal to the lowest common denominator,” during an appearance on the United Kingdom’s ITV network.
Source: “One Of the Biggest Geniuses Ever Issues A Warning About Donald Trump” By Oliver Willis May 30, 2016 7:17 pm AddictingInfo website (for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source) -
Democracy is not Capitalism.
Capitalism is not Democracy.
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism. We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is a system that includes capitalism; but, it is NOT Democratic Socialism--it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the educational, health, transportation and communication infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about capitalism, or socialism, but it IS—neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism.
-
Democracy is not Capitalism.
Capitalism is not Democracy.
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism. We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is a system that includes capitalism; but, it is NOT Democratic Socialism--it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the health, transportation, communication and energy/transportatio infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about capitalism, or socialism, but it is—neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism. -
gdn: As per the following—Please name just one, Mr. Holder
“I know there are ways in which certain of our agents were put at risk, relationships with other countries were harmed, our ability to keep the American people safe was compromised,” Holder told Axelrod.
Source:
“Eric Holder says Edward Snowden performed 'public service' with NSA leak” Monday 30 May 2016 16.56 BST—The Guardian website (for full article--copy & paste to search, that, that follows Source)
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“…we have designed our trade deals to subject our manufacturing workers to competition, while we have maintained or increased the protection for our doctors and lawyers [and capital by allowing it to globalise].
Source: The Elites and the Rise of Donald Trump
Monday, 30 May 2016 00:00
By Dean Baker, Truthout | Op-Ed at Truthout website (for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source)
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gdn: Another Trump business failure.
“Donald Trump himself doesn’t own the Toronto tower — it belongs to Talon Developments, which licensed the Trump brand for the skyscraper, and hired a Trump-owned company to run the property.
Talon’s clients are “no longer interested in the Trump brand” because Trump himself has damaged it, company lawyer Symon Zucker said.
“It’s more important for him to be president than run a successful business,” Zucker told the Toronto Star last month.””
Source:
Trump Tower Toronto To Be Sold Off After Debt Default: Report
at Huffington Post website (for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source)
Posted: 05/27/2016 1:19 pm EDT
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Democracy is not Capitalism.
Capitalism is not Democracy.
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism. We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is a system that includes capitalism. So, it is NOT Democratic Socialism; it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the youth-of-today's education, health and housing, and to pay for health, transportation, communication and energy infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about caitalism, or socialism, but it is—neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism.
-
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism. We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is a system that includes capitalism. So, it is NOT Democratic Socialism; it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the youth-of-today's education, health and housing, and to pay for health, transportation, communication and energy infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about caitalism, or socialism, but it is—neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism.
-
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism (as in Democratic Socialism). We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is very much a system that includes much capitalism. So, it is NOT Democratic Socialism; it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the youth-of-today's education, health and housing, and to pay for transportation, communication and energy infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about caitalism, or socialism but it is neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism. -
I wish everyone, including Bernie Sanders, would stop conflating democracy with capitalism. We all know that present day Democratic Socialism is very much a system that includes much capitalism. So, it is NOT Democratic Socialism; it is Capitalistic Socialism or Capital Socialism. It is a system that taxes the rich and its capital, to fund the youth-of-today's education, health and housing, and to pay for transportation, communication and energy infrastructure for all---the social needs of the commons. The process of democracy can bring about caitalism, or socialism but it is neither.
By the way, this writer is much in favor of Capital Funded Socialism or Capital Socialism. -
"...the Clinton years were devastating for just about everyone in the Democratic Party except Bill Clinton—largely because, by cozying up to corporations, the party walked away from its core values and constituencies:
Democrats were once a majority party standing on some firm principles—helping the little guy, economic security and, to some degree, standing up to corporations on behalf of workers, consumers and the environment. But Clintonism has come to mean coddling big money (except guns and tobacco), financial scandals, winning at any cost, flip-flopping and prevaricating."
Source: "Move Over–Over and Over"
Media’s rightward push for Democrats
By Peter Hart and Steve Rendall at FAIR website (for full article--copy & paste to search that, that follows Source) -
Why are [establishment] Democrats resorting to blatant smears of the Sanders campaign if the nomination is already secure? If establishment Democrats actually believe that party unity is important, why have they ramped up their divisiveness?
Source:
Hillary Clinton to California: “Drop Dead”
By William M. Boardman
Global Research, May 23, 2016
Reader Supported News 22 May 2016 globalresearch web site
(For access, copy paste to a search)
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gdn: How the wealth gap arrived couldn't be illustrated any better.
"The bill for the CT scan and the two little pills was $5,000—that I must pay out of pocket. This means I am out about $10,000 so far this year in health care costs (including insurance premiums). This represents a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the stockholders of the private emergency room that took care of me."
Source: There must be a better way to provide health care
By Egberto Willies
Sunday May 22, 2016 · 5:01 PM MDT Daily Kos website (For article, copy that following Source: and search)
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gdn: How the wealth gap arrived couldn't be illustrated any better.
"The bill for the CT scan and the two little pills was $5,000—that I must pay out of pocket. This means I am out about $10,000 so far this year in health care costs (including insurance premiums). This represents a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the stockholders of the private emergency room that took care of me."
Source: There must be a better way to provide health care
By Egberto Willies
Sunday May 22, 2016 · 5:01 PM MDT Daily Kos website (For article, copy that following Source: and search0
-
gdn: How the wealth gap arrived couldn't be illustrated any better.
"The bill for the CT scan and the two little pills was $5,000—that I must pay out of pocket. This means I am out about $10,000 so far this year in health care costs (including insurance premiums). This represents a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the stockholders of the private emergency room that took care of me."
Source: There must be a better way to provide health care
By Egberto Willies
Sunday May 22, 2016 · 5:01 PM MDT Daily Kos website (For article, copy that following Source: and search0
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(gdn: This is an example of what concerns Bernie with Hilary:)
“With the coup, Clinton had a real opportunity to do the right thing and shift US policy to respect democratic processes,” added Alex Main, an expert on US policy in Central America at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, after being told of the program. “But she completely messed it up, and we’re seeing the consequences of it now.”
Source:
How Hillary Clinton Militarized US Policy in Honduras
She used a State Department office closely involved with counterinsurgency efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq to aid the coup regime in Honduras.
By Tim Shorrock The Nation website (for full article—copy after Source: and paste to a search)
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gdn: I can’t decide which article in “The New Yorker” tells me how absolutely dangerous this Trump is:
MEGYN KELLY’S GUIDE TO SURRENDERING TO DONALD TRUMP
By Amy Davidson , May 18, 2016
OR
DAILY COMMENT
THE DANGEROUS ACCEPTANCE OF DONALD TRUMP
By Adam Gopnik , May 20, 2016
Source for the 2 articles: The NewYorker website. (copy paste either title, paste to a search site will find the article) -
“KING: Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too”
…..“Did you know that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, and is now the chair of the DNC, earlier this year did away with all of the restrictions on lobbyists that President Obama put in place?…..
…..According to the Washington Post,
”The DNC's recent, more sweeping reversal of the previous [Obama] ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee's decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet.”….”
Source: “KING: Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too” by Shaun King
nydailynews website -
“KING: Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too”
“Did you know that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, and is now the chair of the DNC, earlier this year did away with all of the restrictions on lobbyists that President Obama put in place?
According to the Washington Post,
"The DNC's recent, more sweeping reversal of the previous [Obama] ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee's decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet.””
Source: “Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too” by Shaun King
nydailynews website -
Did you know that Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was a co-chair of Hillary Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, and is now the chair of the DNC, earlier this year did away with all of the restrictions on lobbyists that President Obama put in place?
According to the Washington Post,
"The DNC's recent, more sweeping reversal of the previous [Obama] ban on donations from lobbyists and political action committees was confirmed by three Democratic lobbyists who said they have already received solicitations from the committee. The lobbyists requested anonymity to speak freely about the committee's decision, which has been otherwise kept quiet."
Source: “Here’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party after this presidential election and you should too” by Shaun King
nydailynews website
-
“Public-private partnerships now are almost always skewed toward the private,” says Sean Sweeney, founder and director of the International Program for Labor, Climate, and Environment at CUNY. “All the risk is shouldered by the public, and all the profits are gained by the private. And that’s got to be readjusted.”
Source: How To Socialize America’s Energy
byKate Aronoff CommonDreams website
-
Drumpf is afraid to release his taxes for 1 of 2 reasons, 1) it will show he is not as rich as he claims, or 2) he has paid little tax on much wealth and income.
-
(gdn: There is the non-US side to the Brazil crises)
“Prior to Rousseff’s ouster, Secretary General Luis Almagro of the Organization of American States released a strong statement:
Our Organization has made a detailed analysis of the impeachment process against Dilma, and has concluded that it does not fit within the rules that govern this process.
There is no criminal accusation against the president; rather she has been accused of the poor administration of public resources in 2014. This is an accusation that is political in character, and that does not merit an impeachment process.”
Source: Published on
Thursday, May 19, 2016
by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR)
Brazil’s Neighbors Warn of President’s ‘Dangerous’ Ouster–but US Press Isn’t Listening
byJim Naureckas
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“…60 percent of all U.S. households in 2013 had no retirement savings….”
“A report released Thursday from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) shows the shift away from traditional pensions to 401(k)-like plans contributes to inequality. Bloomberg reported Friday, "The U.S. retirement landscape is starting to look like a Charles Dickens novel."
Source: Thom’s Blog via his newsletter
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[Re: Nevada Dem Dispute] The trouble began brewing weeks earlier, when the executive board of the Nevada Democratic National Committee, in the wake of Sanders' win in the state's county caucuses in April, passed a set of new temporary convention rules (pdf) that awarded convention chair Roberta Lange, a Clinton supporter, nearly unilateral control over convention proceedings than the chair had held at prior conventions. There was no venue to challenge Lange's decisions under the new rules.
Source: “When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?” Nika Knight, staff writer. CommonDreams website.
-
[Re: Nevada Dem Dispute] The trouble began brewing weeks earlier, when the executive board of the Nevada Democratic National Committee, in the wake of Sanders' win in the state's county caucuses in April, passed a set of new temporary convention rules (pdf) that awarded convention chair Roberta Lange, a Clinton supporter, nearly unilateral control over convention proceedings than the chair had held at prior conventions. There was no venue to challenge Lange's decisions under the new rules.
Source: “When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?” Nike Knight, staff writer. CommonDreams website
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by ger32
4 hours, 28 minutes ago
view rss like
[Re: Nevada Dem Dispute] The trouble began brewing weeks earlier, when the executive board of the Nevada Democratic National Committee, in the wake of Sanders' win in the state's county caucuses in April, passed a set of new temporary convention rules (pdf) that awarded convention chair Roberta Lange, a Clinton supporter, nearly unilateral control over convention proceedings than the chair had held at prior conventions. There was no venue to challenge Lange's decisions under the new rules.
Source: “When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?” Nike Knight, staff writer. CommonDreams website.
-
[Re: Nevada Dem Dispute] The trouble began brewing weeks earlier, when the executive board of the Nevada Democratic National Committee, in the wake of Sanders' win in the state's county caucuses in April, passed a set of new temporary convention rules (pdf) that awarded convention chair Roberta Lange, a Clinton supporter, nearly unilateral control over convention proceedings than the chair had held at prior conventions. There was no venue to challenge Lange's decisions under the new rules.
Source: “When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?” Nike Knight, staff writer. CommonDreams website (to access, add “.org”)
-
[Re: Nevada Dem Dispute] The trouble began brewing weeks earlier, when the executive board of the Nevada Democratic National Committee, in the wake of Sanders' win in the state's county caucuses in April, passed a set of new temporary convention rules (pdf) that awarded convention chair Roberta Lange, a Clinton supporter, nearly unilateral control over convention proceedings than the chair had held at prior conventions. There was no venue to challenge Lange's decisions under the new rules.
Source: “When the System Feels Rigged, How Surprising is Convention Mayhem?” Nike Knight, staff writer. CommonDreams website (to access, add “.org”)
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gdn: I wonder if the NYT has ever complained about Fox News "fracturing its relationship with the” left…..I don't think so.
Facebook Moves to Repair Its Fractured Relationship With the Right
By CECILIA KANG
The social network, which had already been criticized for its top executives expressing liberal views, is now rebutting claims that its news curators commonly engaged in anti-conservative bias.
Source: NYT Newsletter -
gdn: I wonder if the NYT has ever complained about Fox News "fracturing its relationship with the" liberal community. I don't think so.
Facebook Moves to Repair Its Fractured Relationship With the Right
By CECILIA KANG
The social network, which had already been criticized for its top executives expressing liberal views, is now rebutting claims that its news curators commonly engaged in anti-conservative bias.
Source: NYT Newsletter
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FDR’s dream has, however, been realized in Scandinavia and the other Nordic countries.
As my friend the great comedian Dick Gregory once said, “If something’s good, people will steal it.”
That’s exactly what the Nordic countries did with FDR’s Second Bill of Rights: They stole it.
And who can blame them? It works.
Well, it’s time for us to follow their lead. It’s time for us to return to our roots and bring the Nordic model back to its rightful home: the United States of America.
It’s time to make FDR’s dream a reality.
Source: thomhartmann website .com -
Our country [the USA] is crippled by a debt to private banks. We owe them more money than exists in our entire economy…and they never had that money to loan in the first place.
Source: Positive Money FB page -
There's a myth out there that "big government" is bad for business, but democratic socialist Denmark, democratic socialist Sweden, democratic socialist Norway and democratic socialist Sweden are all in the top 10 of Forbes magazine's ranking of the best countries in which to do business.
Source: The United States Needs to Realize FDR's Dream and Adopt the "Nordic Model" 16 May 2016 00:00 By The Daily Take Team, Thom Hartmann Program, Truthout website. (add .org to Truthout)
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British PM Cameron said Trump was stupid. Trump answered, "I'm not stupid." Any candidate for high office who has to say, "I'm not stupid," is unqualified for high office, in my view.
-
EDITORIAL OBSERVER---NYT
What Atlantic City Casino Workers Know About the Trump Brand
By FRANCIS X. CLINES
The candidate's string of failures and dealings with unions in the New Jersey city give a glimpse into his methods.
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Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling... Attempts to limit competition are treated as attacks on liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimized, public services should be privatized. Unions and collective bargaining are market distortions that impede the natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous -- a reward for the generators of wealth that trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market (left free and unregulated) ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.
vs.
"Freedom from unions and collective bargaining means the freedom to suppress wages. Freedom from regulation is the freedom to poison rivers, endanger workers, and charge iniquitous rates of interest. Freedom from taxes means freedom from the distribution of wealth that lifts people out of poverty."
BY ED FINN | MAY 12, 2016 on Rabble website. (is a .com site) -
Did you know—That if everyone paid off their loans at the banks, there would be NO money left and the economy would collapse? This proves what a former exchequer of the Bank of England said many years ago, “The banking system is a total con game" (or words to that effect).
Most money that exists is created by the banks via loans; the exception is coins and paper currency. -
We believe the power to create money must be removed from the banks that caused the financial crisis and returned to a democratic, transparent and accountable body. New money must only be created and used to benefit the public and society as a whole, rather than just the financial sector. There are detailed and workable proposals that would allow this to happen. Even the Financial Times has written about the need to prevent banks from being able to create money.
Source: International Movement for Monetary Reform (this is a .org site) -
Because almost all of our [created] money is ‘on loan’ from banks, someone has to pay interest [on it]. This interest redistributes money from the bottom 90% of the population to the very top 10%. Meanwhile, inflated house prices and financial instability all lead to a growing gap between the poor and the rich.
Source: http://positivemoney.or-g/issues/inequality/
(remove hyphen fro "or-g" to use URL above)
-
Did you know—That if everyone paid off their loans at the banks, there would be NO money left and the economy would collapse? This proves what a former exchequer of the Bank of England said many years ago, “The banking system is a total con game" (or words to that effect).
Most money that exists is created by the banks via loans. -
Did you know—That if everyone paid off their loans at the banks, there would be NO money left and the economy would collapse? This proves what a former exchequer of the Bank of England said many years ago, “The banking system is a total con game" (or words to that effect)
-
"The American socialist Eugene Debs -- who ran five times for president as a candidate of the Socialist Party (SP) -- took a completely different attitude toward the relationship between workers, elected officials and democracy. He said in 1905:
Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again…..[gdn: this occured beginning in 1973 with the Powell Memo, then ALEC. then Reagan]
....I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. You do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without you. You would just begin to live without him. You do everything and he has everything; and some of you imagine that if it were not for him, you would have no work. As a matter of fact, he does not employ you at all; you employ him to take from you what you produce, and he faithfully sticks to his task. If you can stand it, he can: and if you don't change this relation, I am sure he won't. You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride."
Source: Truthout.org "What Does a Socialist Movement Look Like?"
By Elizabeth Schulte, Socialist Worker
-
"The American socialist Eugene Debs -- who ran five times for president as a candidate of the Socialist Party (SP) -- took a completely different attitude toward the relationship between workers, elected officials and democracy. He said in 1905:
Too long have the workers of the world waited for some Moses to lead them out of bondage. He has not come; he never will come. I would not lead you out if I could; for if you could be led out, you could be led back again.....
....I would have you make up your minds that there is nothing that you cannot do for yourselves. You do not need the capitalist. He could not exist an instant without you. You would just begin to live without him. You do everything and he has everything; and some of you imagine that if it were not for him, you would have no work. As a matter of fact, he does not employ you at all; you employ him to take from you what you produce, and he faithfully sticks to his task. If you can stand it, he can: and if you don't change this relation, I am sure he won't. You make the automobile, he rides in it. If it were not for you, he would walk; and if it were not for him, you would ride."
Source: Truthout.org "What Does a Socialist Movement Look Like?"
By Elizabeth Schulte, Socialist Worker
-
"... some key characteristics of the average Trump voter are ignorance, poverty, bigotry, and a desire to turn back the clock on what most Americans consider to be social progress."
Source: "Trumpism and the 'Liberal Elite' by Eric Alterman in The Nation Magazine
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"Today in Norway, negotiations between the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions and the Confederation of Norwegian Enterprise determine the wages and working conditions of most capitalist enterprises, public and private, that create wealth, while high but fair progressive income taxes fund the state’s universal welfare system, benefiting everyone."
(gdn: Canada and the US could learn from Norway, but maybe it takes a revolution first--political or otherwise.)
Source: After I Lived in Norway, America Felt Backward. Here’s Why--By Ann Jones--The Nation -
"Meanwhile, a separate poll found that in key presidential swing states the anointed nominees [Clinton and Trump] are running neck and neck.
The latest Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday shows Clinton beating Trump by just one point—43 to 42 percent—in both Florida and Pennsylvania. In Ohio, the real estate mogul holds a four-point lead over Clinton, with 43 to 39 percent."
https://is.gd/jiOVbD
(gdn: Democrats, Liberals and Progressives and all sensible people—be afraid, be very afraid—please--and vote.)
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view delete rss like
"Meanwhile, a separate poll found that in key presidential swing states the anointed nominees [Clinton and Trump] are running neck and neck.
The latest Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday shows Clinton beating Trump by just one point—43 to 42 percent—in both Florida and Pennsylvania. In Ohio, the real estate mogul holds a four-point lead over Clinton, with 43 to 39 percent."
https://is.gd/jiOVbD
(gdn: Democrats, Liberals and Progressives and all sensible people—be afraid, be very afraid—please--and vote.) -
"Meanwhile, a separate poll found that in key presidential swing states the anointed nominees [Clinton and Trump] are running neck and neck.
The latest Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday shows Clinton beating Trump by just one point—43 to 42 percent—in both Florida and Pennsylvania. In Ohio, the real estate mogul holds a four-point lead over Clinton, with 43 to 39 percent."
https://is.gd/jiOVbD
(gdn: Democrats, Liberals and Progressives and all sensible people—be afraid, be very afraid—please.) -
"Meanwhile, a separate poll found that in key presidential swing states the anointed nominees are running neck and neck.
The latest Quinnipiac University survey released Tuesday shows Clinton beating Trump by just one point—43 to 42 percent—in both Florida and Pennsylvania. In Ohio, the real estate mogul holds a four-point lead over Clinton, with 43 to 39 percent."
https://is.gd/jiOVbD -
"The Western response to Russia’s collapse was triumphalist. It was hailed as signaling “the end of history,” the final victory of Western capitalist democracy, almost as if Russia were being instructed to revert to its pre-World War I status as a virtual economic colony of the West. NATO enlargement began at once, in violation of verbal assurances to Gorbachev that NATO forces would not move “one inch to the east” after he agreed that a unified Germany could become a NATO member—a remarkable concession, in the light of history. That discussion kept to East Germany. The possibility that NATO might expand beyond Germany was not discussed with Gorbachev, even if privately considered."
Source: "Who Rules the World" by Noam Chomsky--The Nation Mag
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The West sees NATO enlargement as benign. Not surprisingly, Russia, along with much of the Global South, has a different opinion, as do some prominent Western voices. George Kennan warned early on that NATO enlargement is a “tragic mistake,” and he was joined by senior American statesmen in an open letter to the White House describing it as a “policy error of historic proportions.”
Source: "Who Rules the World?" The Nation Mag -
"...the “Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 was in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement’; the Ukraine crisis of 2014 is the second. It is not clear whether humanity would survive a third.”"
http://www.thenation.com/article/who-rules-the-world/ -
"...the “Russo-Georgian war of August 2008 was in effect the first of the ‘wars to stop NATO enlargement’; the Ukraine crisis of 2014 is the second. It is not clear whether humanity would survive a third.”"
http://www.thenation.com/article/who-rules-the-world/ -
"When it comes to children, Republicans are hypocrites.
They go on and on about how "pro-life" they are, but they really only care about humans before they're born. After that, they couldn't care less."
Source: Thom Hartmann newsletter
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http://goo.gl/3Upak5
Everything Pres Obama is quoted as saying here is contradicted by FDR. FDR demanded extreme political change, not just incremental change. (gdn--Obama disappoints me here.) -
The War on Terror that the US and its allies have waged for the past 15 years has only created more terrorists. Military solutions rarely work. Different approaches are needed and they will have to begin with redistribution of the world's resources in order to make people want to live rather than to kill and die. People need hope.
http://goo.gl/lcsSC4 -
"In 1944, FDR gave arguably one of the most important speeches of his life in his State of the Union address. He said to prevent fascism in the United States and to put democracy on solid footing it was necessary to add a 'second bill of rights' to the constitution, also called an economic bill of rights. This included the right to a job at a living wage, the right to healthcare, the right to housing, the right to food, the right to education, the right to not have monopolistic firms dominate the economy, and so on."
(Photo: FDR Presidential Library & Museum)
http://goo.gl/XUmhTD
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"The parents of nine Texas children are suing the state over the fact that they were asked to educate their children in subjects like math and spelling and not just church hymns and theology. Their argument: Why waste our time on education, when the second coming of Jesus Christ is upon us."
http://goo.gl/m5rA2b -
"TTIP is about a huge transfer of democratic power from people to big business. We call on all elected representative and other concerned parties to read these documents and engage in the debate."
http://goo.gl/XR5SR9
Download of whistle blown transcripts of TIPP:
https://ttip-leaks.org/zeus/docall.zip -
"TTIP is about a huge transfer of democratic power from people to big business. We call on all elected representative and other concerned parties to read these documents and engage in the debate."
http://goo.gl/XR5SR9 -
Donald Trump has slammed Washington insiders, lobbyists, and Wall Street as he has tapped populist anger to snag the Republican presidential nomination. Yet when it came time to pick the top money man for his campaign, he turned to a hedge-funder best known for running a bank that made billions off taxpayer bailouts and, by one account, cost the federal government $13 billion….
…Trump named Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs partner and a hedge-fund boss from Los Angeles, as his national campaign finance chairman….
…OneWest [owned by Steven Mnuchin] was the only bank that refused to settle. The bank also was the target of angry homeowners who filed lawsuits around the country that accused the bank of being overly aggressive in foreclosing. In one notable 2009 case that turned into a cause celebre for opponents of predatory loan practices, a Minnesota woman found herself locked out of her mother's house in the middle of a blizzard after OneWest took the house and changed the locks while still in negotiations to refinance the home.
http://goo.gl/0rSOaS -
(gdn: These are brilliant statements--From a possible future POTUS.)
“We have great relationships with many foreign countries, but they have to respect us and they have to understand where we’re coming from. And you know it is a two-way street. And the two-way street means that we’re going down one side and they’re coming up the other.”
Or:
“Now, we can keep things going and we’re going to keep things going very nicely. But we owe, soon, $21 trillion. … And we’re just not in the position that we were in 30 years ago, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, when a lot of these things took place and began taking place.”--D. J. Trump
http://goo.gl/iWYHJM -
(gdn: This is brilliant. From a possible future POTUS.)
“We have great relationships with many foreign countries, but they have to respect us and they have to understand where we’re coming from. And you know it is a two-way street. And the two-way street means that we’re going down one side and they’re coming up the other.” --D. J. Trump
http://goo.gl/iWYHJM
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"[T]he story of Brazil’s political crisis, and the rapidly changing global perception of it, begins with its national media. The country’s dominant broadcast and print outlets are owned by a tiny handful of Brazil’s richest families, and are steadfastly conservative. For decades, those media outlets have been used to agitate for the Brazilian rich, ensuring that severe wealth inequality (and the political inequality that results) remains firmly in place." (gdn: And it is likely the the CIA is behind this, if history is any guide.)
http://goo.gl/QqCNTj
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"It’s clear: Free trade with China has hurt more people than originally thought. It’s clear: Low-skilled illegal immigration has hurt more American workers than we’ve fully understood."
(gdn: "It's clear"? You've got to be kidding me! For sure--It was CLEAR--but only to wallstreet--that it would HURT a lot of people.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/opinion/trump-and-the-lords-work.html?emc=edit_th_20160504&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=5552529&_r=0 -
"It’s clear: Free trade with China has hurt more people than originally thought. It’s clear: Low-skilled illegal immigration has hurt more American workers than we’ve fully understood."
(gdn: "It's clear"? You've got to be kidding me! It was CLEAR--but only to wallstreet--that it would hurt a lot of people.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/opinion/trump-and-the-lords-work.html?emc=edit_th_20160504&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=5552529&_r=0 -
"It’s clear: Free trade with China has hurt more people than originally thought. It’s clear: Low-skilled illegal immigration has hurt more American workers than we’ve fully understood."
(gdn: "It's clear"? You've got to be kidding me! It was CLEAR--but only to wallstreet--that it would help ONLY wallstreet.)
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/04/opinion/trump-and-the-lords-work.html?emc=edit_th_20160504&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=5552529&_r=0 -
gdn: This just shocked me when I read it:
"[Here is another] Ronald Reagan [gift to corporate America]. Between 1954 and 1983, the average lease for federal land was $ 2,224 per acre. But after Reagan, between 1983 and 2008, the average lease was just $ 263 an acre."
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 224). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
gdn: The U.S. was fortunate
"[Sergey] Brin [co-founder of Google] was born in Moscow in the Soviet Union, to Russian Jewish parents, Yevgenia and Mikhail Brin, both graduates of Moscow State University.[9][10] His father is a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, and his mother a researcher at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.[1][11][12]
In 1979, when Brin was six years old, his family felt compelled to immigrate to the United States. In an interview with Mark Malseed, co-author of The Google Story,[13] Sergey's father explains how he was "forced to abandon his dream of becoming an astronomer even before he reached college". Mikhail Brin claims Communist Party heads barred Jews from upper professional ranks by denying them entry to universities, and that Jews were excluded from the physics departments in particular. Mikhail Brin therefore changed his major to mathematics where he received nearly straight A's."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Brin -
“This is not a time right now for wishful thinking that governments are going to sort things out. The governments don’t rule the world, Goldman Sachs rules the world"
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 165). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
"It's all so easy if you're part of the one percent.
(Reuters) - I asked a financial services executive recently how our retirement saving system can be considered a success, considering that all but the highest-income households are approaching retirement with next to nothing saved.
His reply: "They don't have any money while they're working, so why would they have any money in retirement?"
It's just that simple. If, like 45 percent of Americans, you're of working age and you don't have a retirement plan, well that's your problem. You can just eat cake when you get old. Because the only the rich deserve to have comfortable retirements.
http://goo.gl/Hj1vq9
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“…How is it that nearly two hundred years after the birth of the Industrial Revolution, which produced humanity’s greatest period of economic expansion, the absolute number of those living in misery, both material and social, has grown exponentially?
How is it that the world’s slum population has developed at a rate vastly greater than that of global population growth?
And how is it that despite incredible technological innovations the world now faces man-made threats of quite different magnitude from the wars, famines, epidemics and other upheavals of previous dark ages? Goldsmith asked these questions in 1994. Little did he know things were about to get a lot worse when the psychopathy was allowed to run loose on Wall Street a few years later.”
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 103). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
"...[the US's] trade imbalance, in 2006 was 7 percent of GDP. That’s the highest peacetime current account deficit ever recorded— second only to Italy in 1924, a year before Benito Mussolini anointed himself dictator of fascist Italy."
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 102). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
"GE has more than half of its workforce in other countries and yet GE’s CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, was appointed to head President Obama’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board to provide guidance on how to fix our economy."
gdn: Without Bernie and a progessive
Congress and liberal courts this can't e stopped.
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 100). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
gdn: Damit, look at this--
"...South Koreans get Internet speeds two hundred times faster than what most Americans get, and pay only $ 27 a month for their service. Professor Susan P. Crawford, author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age and former board member of ICANN, told me that while the average American consumer pays around $ 90 a month for a cell phone with a data plan, the European average is just $ 19"
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 97). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
"During these...years [post WWII to Reagan], the poorest fifth of Americans saw a 116 percent increase in their incomes. The middle fifth, a 111 percent increase. And the top 5 percent saw an 85 percent increase. All income classes shared in the prosperity of the times when the top marginal income tax rate was above 70 percent."
gdn: With Bernie and a Democratic Congress America could have this again.
Hartmann, Thom (2013-11-12). The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (p. 65). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition. -
This crash is coming. It’s inevitable. I may be off a few years plus or minus in my timing, but the realities of the economic fundamentals left to us by thirty-three years of Reaganomics and deregulation have made it a certainty. We are quite simply repeating the mistakes of the 1920s, the 1850s, and the 1760s, and we are so far into them it’s extremely unlikely that anything other than reinflating the recent bubbles to buy a little time here and there will happen.
gdn--This is a must read.
Hartmann, Thom. The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America--and What We Can Do to Stop It (Kindle Locations 234-235). Grand Central Publishing. Kindle Edition.
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"Numerous studies have found a strong connection between right-wing economic policies and suicide.
Recent research from sociologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, for example, found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline. Things were particularly bad during the recession period here in the U.S. when, according to the study's authors, there were 4,750 "excess" suicides.
Another study, this time out of Australia, discovered a similar pattern in that country. It found that almost 35,000 extra suicides occurred when the "Tories" (Australian slang for right-wingers) controlled the government."
Source: https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/04/reaganomics-literally-making-americans-kill-themselves -
"Numerous studies have found a strong connection between right-wing economic policies and suicide.
Recent research from sociologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, for example, found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline. Things were particularly bad during the recession period here in the U.S. when, according to the study's authors, there were 4,750 "excess" suicides.
Another study, this time out of Australia, discovered a similar pattern in that country. It found that almost 35,000 extra suicides occurred when the "Tories" (Australian slang for right-wingers) controlled the government."
Source: "Numerous studies have found a strong connection between right-wing economic policies and suicide.
Recent research from sociologists David Stuckler and Sanjay Basu, for example, found that suicide rates in both the U.S. and U.K. increase when working class wages and wealth decline. Things were particularly bad during the recession period here in the U.S. when, according to the study's authors, there were 4,750 "excess" suicides.
Another study, this time out of Australia, discovered a similar pattern in that country. It found that almost 35,000 extra suicides occurred when the "Tories" (Australian slang for right-wingers) controlled the government."
Source: https://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2016/04/reaganomics-literally-making-americans-kill-themselves -
Dems must stop complaining about the wealth/income gap. Instead must show that steep taxing of the rich grows the economy and jobs by insentivizing the rich to avoid taxes by putting profits back into growing their companies instead of into their pockets. This is what occurred during the steep progressive tax era from FDR to Reagan.
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Dems must stop complaining about the wealth/income gap. Instead must show how steep taxing of the rich grows the economy and jobs by insentivizing the rich to avoid taxes by putting profits back into growing their companies instead of into their pockets.
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"Since the 1980s, the U.S. has systematically violated the U.N. Charter's prohibition against the threat or use of military force, carving out a regime of impunity for itself based on its Security Council veto, its non-recognition of international courts, and sophisticated "information warfare" to whitewash its crimes. But is it possible that our country's decades-long campaign to politically legitimize "the science of killing" has been wasted on something that doesn't work any more?"
http://goo.gl/KV7WV6
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Larry Summers told journalist Ron Suskind during the early days of the Obama administration. “One of the reasons that inequality has probably gone up in our society is that people are being treated closer to the way that they’re supposed to be treated.” Remember, as you let that last sentence slide slowly down your throat, that this was a Democrat saying this— a prominent Democrat, a high-ranking cabinet official in the Clinton years and the man standing at the right hand of power in the first Obama administration.*
gdn: This is the Democratic Party that Bernie wants to change!
Frank, Thomas (2016-03-15). Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (p. 159). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. -
"...Mr. Sanders’s commitment to small individual contributions has put the lie to Democrats’ excuses that they, too, must play the big money game to win."
gdn: I think that the Dems Party should pledge to, from this day forward, adopt Bernie's money raising principals and reject wallstreet money in all future elections. Truly become once again the party of the people.
http://goo.gl/pUwEfv -
"Although Vice President Joe Biden has promised to stay neutral on the Democratic presidential candidates this campaign season, he offered high praise for Bernie Sanders' message in an interview with the New York Times published Thursday: Biden will "take Mr. Sanders' aspirational approach over Mrs. Clinton's caution any day," the newspaper reports.
"I like the idea of saying, 'We can do much more,' because we can," Biden told the Times.
The vice president had harsh words for Clinton's call for slow, incremental change over political revolution. Biden said, "I don't think any Democrat's ever won saying, 'We can't think that big—we ought to really downsize here because it's not realistic," he said in a mocking tone, according to the newspaper. "C'mon man, this is the Democratic Party! I'm not part of the party that says, 'Well, we can't do it.'""
http://goo.gl/JC63lw
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gdn: Based on the following, I think that the Dems Party should pledge to, from this day forward, adopt Bernie's money raising principals and reject wallstreet money in all future elections. Truly become once again the pary of the people.
"...Mr. Sanders’s commitment to small individual contributions has put the lie to Democrats’ excuses that they, too, must play the big money game to win."
http://goo.gl/pUwEfv -
gdn: Hurray for this>>>
"...only 17 percent of Germans believe the corporate-friendly trade agreement [theTTIP] is a good thing, down from 55 percent in 2014. Likewise, in the United States, only 18 percent support the deal, compared to 53 percent two years ago..."
gdn: But trouble is>>>
"...though nearly half of U.S. respondents said they did not know enough about the agreement to voice an opinion."
http://goo.gl/dS2Q7N
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"...if you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a poor family, you're likely to go to prison. If you have psychopathic tendencies and are born to a rich family, you're likely to go to business school."
"In their book Snakes in Suits, Paul Babiak and Robert Hare point out that as the old corporate bureaucracies have been replaced by flexible, ever-changing structures, and as team players are deemed less valuable than competitive risk-takers, psychopathic traits are more likely to be selected and rewarded. Reading their work, it seems to me that..."
(gdn: the above excerpts I have reversed for more impact)
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/nov/07/one-per-cent-wealth-destroyers
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I have been a long time fan of Glen Campbell and after a Paul Strand post on him, I looked him up on YouTube and found this video. I planned on watching for a little bit and then go on to my “armchair social activism.” But I found I just couldn’t stop watching and watched it all with profound joy. AND. This South Dakota symphony orchestra is outstanding, Enjoy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zqyQN6NnuYAttached Media
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"The mantra that the West should not negotiate with “terrorists” is naive. There has hardly ever been a time when terrorists have been brought back into the fold of society without negotiation. Remember the IRA; once they tried to blow up your prime minister, and now they are in parliament. It is always better to talk than to kill."
http://www.alternet.org/world/im-kill-list-what-it-feels-be-hunted-drones
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"Saudi Arabia Threatens to Sell Off Billions in U.S. Assets if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.
gdn: (These Saudi leader bas****s!) Our monstrous military budget is quite useless in today’s world now isn’t it, neocons."
http://goo.gl/TtfZpQ -
"Saudi Arabia Threatens to Sell Off Billions in U.S. Assets if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.
gdn: (These Saudi leader bas****s!) Our monstrous military budget is quite useless in today’s world now isn’t it, neocons."
http://goo.gl/TtfZpQ -
"Saudi Arabia Threatens to Sell Off Billions in U.S. Assets if Congress Passes 9/11 Bill.
gdn: (Saudi bas****s! Our monstrous military budget is quite useless in today’s world now isn’t it, neocons."
http://goo.gl/TtfZpQ -
"To judge by what he actually accomplished, Bill Clinton was not the lesser of two evils [re Pugs], as people on the left always say about Democrats at election time; he was the greater of the two. What he did as president was beyond the reach of even the most diabolical Republican. Only smiling Bill Clinton, well-known friend of working families, could commit such betrayals."
gdn: This well-written book by a liberal, chastises Bill Clinton as well he should be.
Frank, Thomas (2016-03-15). Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (p. 108). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. -
Today 97% of all money in the economy is created by private banks out of nothing [out of “thin air”] and lent to us at interest [sometimes at 30 to 40 percent interest].
Source: Public Banking Institute newsletter. -
"All of the activities classified by regulators as shadow banking [,Hillary's favourite term for this suspect and destructive financial activity,] are core activities of large banking organizations, both directly and through affiliated entities. It is anomalous to call them “shadow” activities since they occur in the supervisory headlights of banking regulators. The shadow banking system could not exist without banks and their affiliates. Banks are instrumental in the securitization of assets, which forms the backbone of the shadow banking system."
http://goo.gl/QFKTG8
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gdn: hmmmmmmm
"It is noteworthy that the diplomatic agreement with Iran to restrain its nuclear program and to give up much of its low-enriched uranium required Clinton's departure from the State Department in 2013. I'm told that Obama understood that he needed to get her out of the way for the diplomacy to work."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35578-is-hillary-clinton-qualified
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gdn: This article lists the many Clinton failures--quite shocking>>
"...Clinton bought the conventional wisdom that Gates's nomination meant that Bush was winding down the Iraq War despite warnings that it actually meant the opposite.
If Clinton had done any digging, she could have discovered that Rumsfeld was dumped not because of his warmongering but because he backed his field generals -- George Casey and John Abizaid -- who wanted to rapidly shrink the US military "footprint" in Iraq. But Bush and his neocon advisers saw that as effectively an admission of defeat, so they got rid of Rumsfeld and recruited the more malleable Gates to front for their planned escalation or "surge.""
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35578-is-hillary-clinton-qualified
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gdn: the following makes it nearly impossible for Bernie to win>>
"In New York, about 20 percent of the state’s 11.7 million voters are unaffiliated with any party [and therefore can't vote for Bernie], according to Board of Elections data.
Also barred from the April 19 primary are voters registered with third parties, including the 48,000 people registered with the Working Families Party. The party endorsed Sanders and its volunteers have been working hard for the insurgent, but those registered on its line won’t be able to vote for him. Neither will the 26,000 Green Party members in the state."
http://goo.gl/83yoJ9
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"Intuit has spent over 13 million dollars to lobby AGAINST efforts to make taxes less complicated. After all, if taxes were made simple, then why would you need to shell out big bucks to use their convoluted system? (along with their ever-increasing fees.)"
http://goo.gl/ryKJVh
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"[Pres Clinton's] welfare reform was a meanspirited thing to do—“ one of the most regressive social programs promulgated by a democratic government in the twentieth century,” in the words of the sociologist Loïc Wacquant, who has studied the subject in depth."
Frank, Thomas (2016-03-15). Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (p. 104). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. -
gdn: Did you know this? I didn’t. It is one of main causes of the income gap.
"...Copyright terms began in 1790 at 14 years and were expanded in 1831 to 28 years (largely at the behest, I might add, of none other than Noah Webster—you can guess why he wanted longer copyright terms). Copyright then expanded in scope to movies, radio and so forth but it remained at 28 years until 1976 when it was dramatically lengthened to life of the author plus 50 years. (Did we so lack for artistic output prior to 1976 that we needed such an expansion?) It was then expanded again in 1998 to life of the author plus 70 years!"
https://www.quora.com/session/Alex-Tabarrok/1 -
gdn: I am a Bernie supporter and a bit anti-Hillary, but I find this article about Hilary somewhat re-assuring. Here is an excerpt. Link is below the excerpt--
"When I hear claims about Hillary Clinton, the money-grubbing shill for Wall Street who thinks just like a Republican, I don’t recognize the woman who once snapped at her husband for not fighting hard enough for universal healthcare, telling him, “You weren’t elected to do Wall Street economics.” Similarly, I see no shifty dishonesty in the Hillary Clinton who, in 2005, pushed for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Bush administration’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina, and who today is the woman making the administrative negligence in Flint, Mich., central to her campaign."
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18942/why-progressives-should-support-hillary-clinton
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gdn: I am a Bernie supporter and a bit anti-Hillary, but I find this article about Hilary somewhat re-assuring--
"When I hear claims about Hillary Clinton, the money-grubbing shill for Wall Street who thinks just like a Republican, I don’t recognize the woman who once snapped at her husband for not fighting hard enough for universal healthcare, telling him, “You weren’t elected to do Wall Street economics.” Similarly, I see no shifty dishonesty in the Hillary Clinton who, in 2005, pushed for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Bush administration’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina, and who today is the woman making the administrative negligence in Flint, Mich., central to her campaign."
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18942/why-progressives-should-support-hillary-clinton
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gdn: This is very, very interesting:
"It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”
It is in full accord with traditional notions of waiver to say that the Senate, having been given a reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent to the president with respect to the nomination of Garland, and having failed to do so, can fairly be deemed to have waived its right."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
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gdn: This is very, very interesting:
"It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”
It is in full accord with traditional notions of waiver to say that the Senate, having been given a reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent to the president with respect to the nomination of Garland, and having failed to do so, can fairly be deemed to have waived its right."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
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gdn: This is very, very interesting:
"It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”
It is in full accord with traditional notions of waiver to say that the Senate, having been given a reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent to the president with respect to the nomination of Garland, and having failed to do so, can fairly be deemed to have waived its right."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
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gdn: This is very, very interesting:
"It is altogether proper to view a decision by the Senate not to act as a waiver of its right to provide advice and consent. A waiver is an intentional relinquishment or abandonment of a known right or privilege. As the Supreme Court has said, “ ‘No procedural principle is more familiar to this Court than that a constitutional right,’ or a right of any other sort, ‘may be forfeited in criminal as well as civil cases by the failure to make timely assertion of the right before a tribunal having jurisdiction to determine it.’ ”
It is in full accord with traditional notions of waiver to say that the Senate, having been given a reasonable opportunity to provide advice and consent to the president with respect to the nomination of Garland, and having failed to do so, can fairly be deemed to have waived its right."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/obama-can-appoint-merrick-garland-to-the-supreme-court-if-the-senate-does-nothing/2016/04/08/4a696700-fcf1-11e5-886f-a037dba38301_story.html
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gdn: Did you know this? I didn't.
"...Copyright terms began in 1790 at 14 years and were expanded in 1831 to 28 years (largely at the behest, I might add, of none other than Noah Webster—you can guess why he wanted longer copyright terms). Copyright then expanded in scope to movies, radio and so forth but it remained at 28 years until 1976 when it was dramatically lengthened to life of the author plus 50 years. (Did we so lack for artistic output prior to 1976 that we needed such an expansion?) It was then expanded again in 1998 to life of the author plus 70 years!"
https://www.quora.com/session/Alex-Tabarrok/1
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""How ironic—no, how perverse—that the USA, which has been so sanctimonious in its condemnation of Swiss banks, has become the banking secrecy jurisdiction du jour," wrote Peter A. Cotorceanu, a lawyer at a Zurich law firm, in a recent legal journal. "That 'giant sucking sound' you hear? It is the sound of money rushing to the U.S.A."
The Guardian points out, "in 2015, in a ranking of tax havens most attractive for those looking to hide assets, the U.S. came in third—surpassing Caymans and Singapore."
"What was Panama’s ranking?" the newspaper writes. "It was ten spots behind the U.S., at 13.""
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/06/beyond-panama-what-world-really-needs-delawarepapers
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(gdn: I do not recall the MSM ever reporting that Obama asked Putin to force Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons.)
"...Obama pulled Putin aside, [At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg,] he recalled to me, and told the Russian president “that if he forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would eliminate the need for us taking a military strike.” Within weeks, Kerry, working with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would engineer the removal of most of Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal—a program whose existence Assad until then had refused to even acknowledge."
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ -
(gdn: I do not recall the MSM ever reporting that Obama asked Putin to force Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons.)
"...Obama pulled Putin aside, [At the G20 summit in St. Petersburg,] he recalled to me, and told the Russian president “that if he forced Assad to get rid of the chemical weapons, that that would eliminate the need for us taking a military strike.” Within weeks, Kerry, working with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, would engineer the removal of most of Syria’s chemical-weapons arsenal—a program whose existence Assad until then had refused to even acknowledge.
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/04/the-obama-doctrine/471525/ -
"... [The] president [elect] willing to inflict these losses on fossil-fuel companies and their allies needs to be more than just not actively corrupt. That president needs to be up for the fight of the century—and absolutely clear about which side must win. Looking at the Democratic primary, there can be no doubt about who is best suited to rise to this historic moment.The good news? He just won Wisconsin. And he isn’t following anyone’s guidelines for good behavior."
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/ -
". A new paper from Oxford University, published in the journal Applied Energy, concludes that for humanity to have a 50-50 chance of meeting the temperature targets set in Paris, every new power plant has to be zero-carbon starting next year."
http://www.thenation.com/article/the-problem-with-hillary-clinton-isnt-just-her-corporate-cash-its-her-corporate-worldview/ -
"Combating climate change "requires a willingness to go head-to-head with the two most powerful industries on the planet—fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them," she writes. "Hillary Clinton is uniquely unsuited to this task."
Among all the uncertainties in the presidential race this year, one thing is certain, Klein says: "The Clinton camp really doesn't like talking about fossil fuel money.""
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/07/naomi-klein-explains-why-clintons-corporate-worldview-cannot-be-ignored
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"Combating climate change "requires a willingness to go head-to-head with the two most powerful industries on the planet—fossil fuel companies and the banks that finance them," she writes. "Hillary Clinton is uniquely unsuited to this task."
Among all the uncertainties in the presidential race this year, one thing is certain, Klein says: "The Clinton camp really doesn't like talking about fossil fuel money.""
http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/07/naomi-klein-explains-why-clintons-corporate-worldview-cannot-be-ignored
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The site for Robert Reich videos:
https://goo.gl/EFUAyZ -
"In terms of return on investment, there’s almost nothing that can beat the corporate purchase of government [through campaign contributions]. For example, according to one analysis, 200 of the most politically active companies reaped an astounding 76,000% return on their investments."
http://goo.gl/bzOa5b -
"'Rather than listening to its members and crafting a policy agenda that reflects their priorities, Chamber lobbyists pick their policy positions behind closed doors and then figure out how to convince their members to fall in line.'
...a high percentage of powerful business executives represented by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce or its more local affiliates actually support an increased minimum wage, paid sick days for employees, extended maternity and paternity leave, and other progressive policies that benefit workers and families?..."
http://goo.gl/aLjWdQ
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[gdn: The pitch forks may have to come out all over the world--not only in the U.S.--to bring the rich to heel.]
"What really matters is the architecture of wealth extraction that has been systematically built up in every country around the world," Brewer says, the purpose of which "was to hoard as much wealth as possible in the hands of a tiny elite."
http://goo.gl/52p5k1 -
"...[If] the United States committed itself to direct financing of biomedical research, with all of the output being put in the public domain. This means that new drugs, like the Hepatitis C drug Solvaldi, could be sold for a few hundred dollars a treatment, as opposed to its US list price for Sovaldi of $84,000...."
http://goo.gl/OgRdxA
gdn: This is an excellent article, re the professions; but it totally misses the need for massive retraining of sub-professional workers who lose their jobs and the need to tax wall street trading and wall street corps. -
"...[If] the United States committed itself to direct financing of biomedical research, with all of the output being put in the public domain. This means that new drugs, like the Hepatitis C drug Solvaldi, could be sold for a few hundred dollars a treatment, as opposed to its US list price for Sovaldi of $84,000...."
http://goo.gl/OgRdxA
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"...Many parents choose charters not because they want to, but because without fully funded, high-functioning local public schools, they feel they have to. If your community schools are riddled with problems, of course you're likely to take a chance on a charter. But that's a false choice. If we funded education the way we should, across the board, for every student, we wouldn't need charters. It's easier to talk about privatizing schools than it is to discuss poverty, racism and other socioeconomic factors that led to the problems in our most struggling schools. Problems which educators are somehow expected to overcome, often without basic provisions."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35443-campbell-brown-the-new-leader-of-the-propaganda-arm-of-school-privatization -
"In study after study, researchers have determined that, on average, charters don't outperform traditional public schools, and not infrequently fare worse."
http://goo.gl/VWuEMA -
William Jennings Bryan, in his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896: There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Kindle Locations 261-264). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.
gdn: Just started reading this exceptional book. I have never been so eager to continue reading a book for a long time. -
William Jennings Bryan, in his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896: There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Kindle Locations 261-264). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.
gdn: Just started reading this exceptional book. I have never been so eager to continue reading a book for a long time. -
William Jennings Bryan, in his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896: There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.
Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Kindle Locations 261-264). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.
gdn: Just started reading this exception book. I have never been so eager to continue reading a book for a long time. -
William Jennings Bryan, in his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896: There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests
Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Kindle Locations 261-264). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition.
gdn: just started reading this book. It looks to be the answer to the Liberal’s problem and America’s problem. -
William Jennings Bryan, in his “Cross of Gold” speech in 1896: There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests
Frank, Thomas. Listen, Liberal: Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People? (Kindle Locations 261-264). Henry Holt and Co.. Kindle Edition. -
"Private frustrations and longings have at last become politicized. And well they should be. Because the reality of the rules of the game turning brutally against the young has nothing to do with technology or the immutable realities of the digital economy—and everything to do with who gets to write the rules.
The policy wonk types like to point out that the Sanders program would require a huge tax increase.
And indeed it would. But as long as the tax hike is on the upper brackets, that only adds to the appeal of the program. During and after World War II, the top marginal tax rate was north of 90 percent, and this was the era of a record economic boom."
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/03/29/sanders-socialism-and-shafted-generation
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"Fraud is an essential part of Wall Street’s DNA. A 2015 survey, commissioned by law firm Labaton Sucharow, found that a deeply immoral culture had taken root among British and American bankers."
http://goo.gl/ccGgDq
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"Sarandon and Silverman both described Sanders as a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.
"This is not a shot that we’re going to have again in my lifetime," Sarandon argued on MSNBC, "to have a candidate who’s so morally consistent, whose judgment proves to be true but who does it at a time it’s not popular, when it’s not comfortable."
"I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who genuinely represents the interests of people, not as a stance, but as a core belief, as his guiding principle," Silverman said. "Don’t be suckered into an American dream Ponzi scheme that was never intended to include you. Vote!" "
http://goo.gl/mn3SRb
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"Sarandon and Silverman both described Sanders as a once-in-a-lifetime candidate.
"This is not a shot that we’re going to have again in my lifetime," Sarandon argued on MSNBC, "to have a candidate who’s so morally consistent, whose judgment proves to be true but who does it at a time it’s not popular, when it’s not comfortable."
"I think this is a once-in-a-lifetime candidate who genuinely represents the interests of people, not as a stance, but as a core belief, as his guiding principle," Silverman said. "Don’t be suckered into an American dream Ponzi scheme that was never intended to include you. Vote!" "
http://goo.gl/mn3SRb
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GDN: In the 2008 bank failure, the tax payer bailed out the banks; but now, according to new Canadian, U.S. and G20 rules they will be again be bailed out by the taxpayer (it is now called "bail-in") but just a by a segment of the tax-payers, i.e., you and I--the depositor. Wake up Canadians, Americans and the World; we are being screwed again by the financial cabal!
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/03/new-canadian-budget-calls-for-bank-bail-ins.html -
GDN: In the 2008 bank failure, the tax payer bailed out the banks; but now, according to new Canadian, U.S. and G20 rules they will be again be bailed out by the taxpayer (it is now called "bail-in") but just a by segment of the tax-payers, i.e., you and I--the depositor. Wake up Canadians, Americans and the World; we are being screwed again by the financial cabal!
http://www.activistpost.com/2016/03/new-canadian-budget-calls-for-bank-bail-ins.html -
"...it's important to keep in mind that because "the Obama administration shamefully refused to prosecute [Bush W and company] the architects of the torture program—and the Justice Department lawyers who gave them legal cover—war crimes are now merely portrayed as a policy dispute between the two political parties.""
http://goo.gl/lnqzLP
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"...it's important to keep in mind that because "the Obama administration shamefully refused to prosecute the architects of the torture program—and the Justice Department lawyers who gave them legal cover—war crimes are now merely portrayed as a policy dispute between the two political parties.""
http://goo.gl/lnqzLP
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"This is one of the most epic comments I’ve ever read anywhere online. It was posted by user soxared040713 over at the New York Times in response to an Op-Ed by David Brooks rationalizing the collapse of his beloved Republican Party.
In this one comment, soxared040713 took down: David Brooks, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, The Bushes, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan… all in one fell swoop.
You have to read this comment for yourself to appreciate just how special it is:
soxared040713
Crete, IL From Boston, MA 15 hours ago
Mr. Brooks, I don't know where to begin. It would be impolite for me to tell you that you have lost your mind. Well, I'm willing to be impolite. I sincerely wish that I wasn't limited to 1,500 characters. I've already wasted 227.
Ronald Reagan was evil; he took an axe to the foundation of the American democratic system "government is the problem", a failure, then set about dividing the country by income and race and section. And smirked when while his clueless base looked the other way while his cronies hogged the government trough they so hated.
Mr. Brooks, please recall the unforgettable scene in Alien. Donald Trump, today, is the awful, bloody thing that forced itself out of the GOP's breast. It uncoils from the corpse, snarls and snaps at everyone standing around in horror and scuttles off, leaving a clattering, putrid mess behind. The image is violent. After Reagan, H. W., Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, W. and Cheney (and now McConnell, Ryan and the departed Boehner), what on earth did you expect from the wreck?
And how do you get off writing "Trump is loveless. There is no room for reciprocity and love in his worldview." ? No, there isn't nor has there been any in the GOP's since, oh, Richard Nixon (1968).
Mr. Brooks, there will be a post-Trump era because we're still in the Reagan area. The merest child could see through your references to Thomas Kuhn's "model." The GOP's a complete disaster. You were there at its creation and cheered it on. Happy today?
1628Recommend
As you see, it was recommended over 1600 times by NYT readers. It was also selected as a New York Times Pick, which is an honor designated only to the most profound comments.
Someone needs to find soxared040713 and give him/her a medal. This has to be the post of the year! "
http://goo.gl/XzXlKZ
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"This is one of the most epic comments I’ve ever read anywhere online. It was posted by user soxared040713 over at the New York Times in response to an Op-Ed by David Brooks rationalizing the collapse of his beloved Republican Party.
In this one comment, soxared040713 took down: David Brooks, Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, The Bushes, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney, Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Paul Ryan… all in one fell swoop.
You have to read this comment for yourself to appreciate just how special it is:
soxared040713
Crete, IL From Boston, MA 15 hours ago
Mr. Brooks, I don't know where to begin. It would be impolite for me to tell you that you have lost your mind. Well, I'm willing to be impolite. I sincerely wish that I wasn't limited to 1,500 characters. I've already wasted 227.
Ronald Reagan was evil; he took an axe to the foundation of the American democratic system "government is the problem", a failure, then set about dividing the country by income and race and section. And smirked when while his clueless base looked the other way while his cronies hogged the government trough they so hated.
Mr. Brooks, please recall the unforgettable scene in Alien. Donald Trump, today, is the awful, bloody thing that forced itself out of the GOP's breast. It uncoils from the corpse, snarls and snaps at everyone standing around in horror and scuttles off, leaving a clattering, putrid mess behind. The image is violent. After Reagan, H. W., Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, W. and Cheney (and now McConnell, Ryan and the departed Boehner), what on earth did you expect from the wreck?
And how do you get off writing "Trump is loveless. There is no room for reciprocity and love in his worldview." ? No, there isn't nor has there been any in the GOP's since, oh, Richard Nixon (1968).
Mr. Brooks, there will be a post-Trump era because we're still in the Reagan area. The merest child could see through your references to Thomas Kuhn's "model." The GOP's a complete disaster. You were there at its creation and cheered it on. Happy today?
1628Recommend
As you see, it was recommended over 1600 times by NYT readers. It was also selected as a New York Times Pick, which is an honor designated only to the most profound comments.
Someone needs to find soxared040713 and give him/her a medal. This has to be the post of the year! "
http://goo.gl/XzXlKZ
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"Sieradski believes that “[T]he common link between Trump’s anti-Jewish supporters and white supremacist supporters is Islamophobia,,” and that Trump has succeeded in uniting both Anti-Semites and anti-Muslim bigots, a singular achievement."
http://goo.gl/vOetLZ -
gdn: A special place in hell for these folks?
"NYTimes put together a piece on a recording of Richard Berman soliciting millions from energy industry execs, back in June.
The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.
“Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. “And you have to budget for it.”"
http://goo.gl/6Tg2W6 -
gdn: A special place in hell for these folks?
"NYTimes put together a piece on a recording of Richard Berman soliciting millions from energy industry execs, back in June.
The company executives, Mr. Berman said in his speech, must be willing to exploit emotions like fear, greed and anger and turn them against the environmental groups. And major corporations secretly financing such a campaign should not worry about offending the general public because “you can either win ugly or lose pretty,” he said.
“Think of this as an endless war,” Mr. Berman told the crowd at the June event in Colorado Springs, sponsored by the Western Energy Alliance, a group whose members include Devon Energy, Halliburton and Anadarko Petroleum, which specialize in extracting oil and gas through hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking. “And you have to budget for it.”"
http://goo.gl/6Tg2W6 -
gdn: This. Is. Rich. -------
"Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn't happy with bills that seek to control women's access to contraception and abortion. She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and "get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency." Sex therapists would be required to present the option of "celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”
http://goo.gl/96sXSz -
gdn: This. Is. Rich. -------
"Ohio state Sen. Nina Turner (D) isn't happy with bills that seek to control women's access to contraception and abortion. She has joined a trend across the nation by introducing a bill that would require men seeking a prescription for erectile dysfunction drugs to see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and "get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency." Sex therapists would be required to present the option of "celibacy as a viable lifestyle choice.”
http://goo.gl/96sXSz -
"...just as Walmart forces stores that can't match their prices to shut their doors, so charters -- which bleed students, and their funding, from traditional schools -- cause local schools to close down..."
"In her book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education, education historian Diane Ravitch explores whether there is any "commonality between the Walmart business philosophy and the Walton funding of school choice." She likens the competition that charters pose to public schools to the competition that Walmart stores present to locally owned stores, and suggests parallel consequences: [see above]."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35348-how-the-cutthroat-walmart-business-model-is-reshaping-american-public-education
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"THIS IS WHAT WE MEAN when we say Black Lives Matter.
How worthless do you have to believe a man to be, in modern America no less, when you allow him, day in and day out, to starve to death before your very eyes?
How little courage must employees have had to not notify the media in advance of his death?
Again, and we must say it, this man stole a Snickers, a Zebra Cake, and a Mountain Dew but died of starvation after serving four months in jail without being charged with a crime.
This is America. 2015."
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/8/31/1417080/-The-horrifying-story-of-Jamycheal-Mitchell-who-starved-to-death-in-jail-after-stealing-a-Snickers -
"THIS IS WHAT WE MEAN when we say Black Lives Matter.
How worthless do you have to believe a man to be, in modern America no less, when you allow him, day in and day out, to starve to death before your very eyes?
How little courage must employees have had to not notify the media in advance of his death?
Again, and we must say it, this man stole a Snickers, a Zebra Cake, and a Mountain Dew but died of starvation after serving four months in jail without being charged with a crime.
This is America. 2015.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/8/31/1417080/-The-horrifying-story-of-Jamycheal-Mitchell-who-starved-to-death-in-jail-after-stealing-a-Snickers -
"It is time to go beyond prayers and sympathies [re ISIS attacks]. We must take a radical step and change the direction of our global policy response."
http://goo.gl/Sy5EkD
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"It is time to go beyond prayers and sympathies [re ISIS attacks]. We must take a radical step and change the direction of our global policy response."
http://goo.gl/Sy5EkD
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Right wing lobbying groups, many of which are funded by the Koch Bros, have refined and perfected the process of making protests APPEAR to be grassroots orientated. Example—the Tea Party.
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"While the [universal healthcare] plan requires a significant payroll tax increase, the transition to ColoradoCare would ultimately save the state more than $4.5 billion per year in health spending, [which, in turn, would allow the state to REDUCE TAXES]"
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/35353-koch-brothers-attempt-to-kill-single-payer-health-care-in-colorado -
"As European nations debate a solution, they would do well to consider [Pope] Francis’ statement that “the first task is to put the economy at the service of peoples.”"
http://americamagazine.org/issue/economy-people
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"According to a recent study published by the OECD, countries that enact strong environmental policies remain just as competitive as more-polluting nations. Despite years of being told that strict environmental regulations kill jobs, the actual data shows that efficiency and innovation allow industries to balance out.
Researchers analyzed data from industries impacted by the Montreal Protocol, like refrigerator manufacturers, and how they survived the strict ozone regulations."
Source: Thom's blog
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This mistake by Obama got by me at the time:
"The disillusionment continued with Obama's 2013 appointment of Wall Street attorney Mary Jo White to head the Securities and Exchange Commission, in which capacity she (inspired perhaps by Citizens United) decided not to require all publicly registered corporations to make their political donations public."
http://inthesetimes.com/article/18981/sanders-clinton-democratic-nomination
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gdn: It was a shock to me to read this:
"Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/
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gdn: It was a shock to me to read this:
"Before 2011, Libya had achieved economic independence, with its own water, its own food, its own oil, its own money, and its own state-owned bank. It had arisen under Qaddafi from one of the poorest of countries to the richest in Africa. Education and medical treatment were free; having a home was considered a human right; and Libyans participated in an original system of local democracy. The country boasted the world’s largest irrigation system, the Great Man-made River project, which brought water from the desert to the cities and coastal areas; and Qaddafi was embarking on a program to spread this model throughout Africa."
http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/03/14/exposing-the-libyan-agenda-a-closer-look-at-hillarys-emails/
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