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Opinion: Trudy Rubin: U.S. ignores health care successes in Europe, Japan - San Jose Me... - 0 views

www.mercurynews.com/...ci_14498573 healthcare conservative lies socialism myths
shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    One of the most bewildering aspects of the current health care debate is the failure to learn key lessons from health systems abroad. Conservative talk show hosts decry the alleged evils of "socialized medicine" in countries with universal health coverage; they warn grimly of rationed health care. Yet there's nary a peep from Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck - let alone Congress - about countries such as Germany, France, Switzerland or Japan, where coverage is universal, affordable, and top quality, and patients see private doctors with little or no waiting. And, oh yes, their health costs are a fraction of our bloated numbers: The French spend 10 percent of GDP on health care, the Germans 11 percent, and they cover every citizen. We spend a whopping 17 percent and leave tens of millions of Americans uninsured. If you want a very readable short course on how European systems really work, take a look at "The Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper, and Fairer Health Care," by T.R. Reid, a former Washington Post foreign correspondent. You might also watch a fascinating 2008 Frontline series, available online, in which Reid was an adviser: "Sick Around the World: Can the U.S. Learn Anything From the Rest of the World About How to Run a Health Care System?"
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    Article continued (Diigo would not highlight!?) - So far, the answer seems to be "no," not because there aren't valuable lessons, but because politicians won't relinquish their myths about European health Advertisement systems. Reid takes up that task. Myth No. 1, he says, is that foreign systems with universal coverage are all "socialized medicine." In countries such as France, Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, the coverage is universal while doctors and insurers are private. Individuals get their insurance through their workplace, sharing the premium with their employer as we do - and the government picks up the premium if they lose their job. Myth No. 2 - long waits and rationed care - is another whopper. "In many developed countries," Reid writes, "people have quicker access to care and more choice than Americans do." In France, Germany, and Japan, you can pick any provider or hospital in the country. Care is speedy and high quality, and no one is turned down. Myth No. 3 really grabs my attention: the delusion that countries with universal care "are wasteful systems run by bloated bureaucracies." In fact, the opposite is true. America's for-profit health insurance companies have the highest administrative costs of any developed country. Twenty percent or more of every premium dollar goes to nonmedical costs: paperwork, marketing, profits, etc. In developed countries with universal coverage, such as France and Germany, the administrative costs average about 5 percent. That's because every developed country but ours has decided health insurance should be a nonprofit operation. These countries also hold down costs by making coverage mandatory and by using a unified set of rules and payment schedules for all hospitals and doctors. This does not mean a single-payer system or a government-run health system. But it does sharply cut health costs by eliminating the mishmash of records and charges used by our myriad insurance firms, who use all kinds of gimmi
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End Limited Liability (and Save the World) - Sign the Petition | Change.org - 0 views

www.change.org/...d_liability_and_save_the_world end limited liability
shared by thinkahol * on 14 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 14 Sep 10
     
    Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Socialist, politically active and not we are reaping the bitter reward of a political and legal system designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of our environment, our livelihood, and our very lives. Our society is unraveling. We all know this. This is not idle conspiracy theory. These are well established facts. We are ruled by a headless beast that is no longer accountable to us. That it is headless makes it no less beastly. But there is a silver bullet. It's within our power to restore a functioning free market; to take back our democracy. We must end limited liability for corporations. Only when wealthy investors are no longer shielded from the costs that we collectively bear in their stead, only when they can no longer hide from the burden they have placed on us, only then can we expect the end of corporate plunder.   We are running out of time. Millions of Germans lost faith in the free market and capitalism during the Great Depression, and "with the failure of the left to provide a viable alternative, they became vulnerable to the rhetoric of a party that, once it came to power, combined Keynesian pump-priming measures that brought unemployment down to 3 percent with a devastating counterrevolutionary social and cultural program."
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Les Leopold: Why are We Afraid to Create the Jobs We Need? - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...e-afraid-to-crea_b_487041.html unemployment government analysis jobs
shared by Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10 - Cached
  • 1. The private sector will create enough jobs, if the government gets out of the way. Possibly, but when? Right now more than 2.7 percent of our entire population has been unemployed for more than 26 weeks -- an all time-record since the government began compiling that data in 1948. No one is predicting that the private sector is about to go on a hiring spree. In fact, many analysts think it'll take more than a decade for the labor market to fully recover. You can't tell the unemployed to wait ten years. Counting on a private sector market miracle is an exercise in faith-based economics. There simply is no evidence that the private sector can create on its own the colossal number of jobs we need. If we wanted to go down to a real unemployment rate of 5% ("full employment"), we'd have to create about 22.4 million jobs. (See Leo Hindery's excellent accounting.) We'd need over 100,000 new jobs every month just to keep up with population growth. It's not fair to the unemployed to pray for private sector jobs that might never come through. 2. We can't afford it. Funding public sector jobs will explode the deficit and the country will go broke: This argument always makes intuitive sense because most of us think of the federal budget as a giant version of our household budget - we've got to balance the books, right? I'd suggest we leave that analogy behind. Governments just don't work the same way as families do. We have to look at the hard realities of unemployment, taxes and deficits. For instance, every unemployed worker is someone who is not paying taxes. If we're not collecting taxes from the unemployed, then we've got to collect more taxes from everyone who is working. Either that, or we have to cut back on services. If we go with option one and raise taxes on middle and low income earners, they'll have less money to spend on goods and services. When demand goes down, businesses contract--meaning layoffs in the private sector. But if we go with option two and cut government services, we'll have to lay off public sector workers. Now we won't be collecting their taxes, and the downward cycle continues. Plus, we don't get the services. Or, we could spend the money to create the jobs and just let the deficit rise a bit more. The very thought makes politicians and the public weak in the knees. But in fact this would start a virtuous cycle that would eventually reduce the deficit: Our newly reemployed people start paying taxes again. And with their increased income, they start buying more goods and services. This new demand leads to more hiring in the private sector. These freshly hired private sector workers start paying taxes too. The federal budget swells with new revenue, and the deficit drops. But let's say you just can't stomach letting the deficit rise right now. You think the government is really out of money--or maybe you hate deficits in principle. There's an easy solution to your problem. Place a windfall profits tax on Wall Street bonuses. Impose a steep tax on people collecting $3 million or more. (Another way to do it is to tax the financial transactions involved in speculative investments by Wall Street and the super-rich.) After all, those fat bonuses are unearned: The entire financial sector is still being bankrolled by the taxpayers, who just doled out $10 trillion (not billion) in loans and guarantees. Besides, taxing the super-rich doesn't put a dent in demand for goods and services the way taxing other people does. The rich can only buy so much. The rest goes into investment, much of it speculative. So a tax on the super rich reduces demand for the very casino type investments that got us into this mess.
  • 3. Private sector jobs are better that public sector jobs. Why is that? There is a widely shared perception that having a public job is like being on the dole, while having a private sector job is righteous. Maybe people sense that in the private sector you are competing to sell your goods and services in the rough and tumble of the marketplace--and so you must be producing items that buyers want and need. Government jobs are shielded from market forces. But think about some of our greatest public employment efforts. Was there anything wrong with the government workers at NASA who landed us on the moon? Or with the public sector workers in the Manhattan project charged with winning World War II? Are teachers at public universities somehow less worthy than those in private universities? Let's be honest: a good job is one that contributes to the well-being of society and that provides a fair wage and benefits. During an employment crisis, those jobs might best come directly from federal employment or indirectly through federal contracts and grants to state governments. This myth also includes the notion that the private sector is more efficient than the public sector. Sometimes it is, but mostly it isn't. Take health care, which accounts for nearly 17 percent of our entire economy. Medicare is a relative model of efficiency, with much lower administrative costs than private health insurers. The average private insurance company worker is far less productive and efficient than an equivalent federal employee working for Medicare. (See study by Himmelstein, Woolhandler and Wolfe) 4. Big government suffocates our freedom. The smaller the central government, the better -- period, the end. This is the hardest argument to refute because it is about ideology not facts. Simply put, many Americans believe that the federal government is bad by definition. Some don't like any government at all. Others think power should reside mostly with state governments. This idea goes all the way back to the anti-federalists led by Thomas Jefferson, who feared that yeomen farmers would be ruled (and feasted upon) by far-away economic elites who controlled the nation's money and wealth. In modern times this has turned into a fear of a totalitarian state with the power to tell us what to do and even deny us our most basic liberties. A government that creates millions of jobs could be seen as a government that's taking over the economy (like taking over GM). It just gets bigger and more intrusive. And more corrupt and pork-ridden. (There's no denying we've got some federal corruption, but again the private sector is hardly immune to the problem. In fact, it lobbies for the pork each and every day.) It's probably impossible to convince anyone who hates big government to change their minds. But we need to consider what state governments can and cannot do to create jobs. Basically, their hands are tied precisely because they are not permitted by our federal constitution to run up debt. So when tax revenues plunge (as they still are doing) states have to cut back services and/or increase taxes. In effect, the states act as anti-stimulus programs. They are laying off workers and will continue to do so until either the private sector or the federal government creates many more jobs. Unlike the feds, states are in no position to regulate Wall Street. They're not big enough, not strong enough and can easily be played off against each other. While many fear big government, I fear high unemployment even more. That's because the Petri dish for real totalitarianism is high unemployment -- not the relatively benign big government we've experienced in America. When people don't have jobs and see no prospect for finding them, they get desperate -- maybe desperate enough to follow leaders who whip up hatred and trample on people's rights in their quest for power. Violent oppression of minority groups often flows from high unemployment. So does war. No thanks. I'll take a government that puts people to work even if it has to hire 10 million more workers itself. We don't have to sacrifice freedom to put people to work. We just have to muster the will to hire them.
  • Skeptical Debunker on 05 Mar 10
     
    Unemployment is the scourge of our nation. It causes death and disease. It eats away at family life. It erodes our sense of confidence and well being. And it's a profound insult to the richest country on Earth. Yet it takes a minor miracle for the Senate just to extend our paltry unemployment benefits and COBRA health insurance premium subsidies for a month. Workers are waiting for real jobs, but our government no longer has the will to create them. How can we allow millions to go without work while Wall Street bankers--the ones who caused people to lose their jobs in the first place-- "earn" record bonuses? Why are we putting up with this? It's not rocket science to create decent and useful jobs, (although it does go beyond the current cranial capacity of the U.S. Senate). It's obvious that we desperately need to repair our infrastructure, increase our energy efficiency, generate more renewable energy, and invest in educating our young. We need millions of new workers to do all this work--right now. Our government has all the money and power (and yes, borrowing capacity) it needs to hire these workers directly or fund contractors and state governments to hire them. Either way, workers would get the jobs, and we would get safer bridges and roads, a greener environment, better schools, and a brighter future all around. So what are we waiting for?
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Petition: End Limited Liability (and Save the World) | Change.org - 0 views

www.change.org/...d-liability-and-save-the-world Petition: End Limited Liability (and Save the World) | Change.org
shared by thinkahol * on 22 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 22 May 11
     
    Democrat or Republican, Libertarian or Socialist, politically active and not we are reaping the bitter reward of a political and legal system designed to maximize corporate profits at the expense of our environment, our livelihood, and our very lives. Our society is unraveling. We all know this. This is not idle conspiracy theory. These are well established facts. We are ruled by a headless beast that is no longer accountable to us. That it is headless makes it no less beastly. But there is a silver bullet. It's within our power to restore a functioning free market; to take back our democracy. We must end limited liability for corporations. Only when wealthy investors are no longer shielded from the costs that we collectively bear in their stead, only when they can no longer hide from the burden they have placed on us, only then can we expect the end of corporate plunder.   We are running out of time. Millions of Germans lost faith in the free market and capitalism during the Great Depression, and "with the failure of the left to provide a viable alternative, they became vulnerable to the rhetoric of a party that, once it came to power, combined Keynesian pump-priming measures that brought unemployment down to 3 percent with a devastating counterrevolutionary social and cultural program."
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Populism and the enchanted world of 'moderate politics' | openDemocracy - 1 views

www.opendemocracy.net/...0%98moderate-politics%E2%80%99 politics theory populism
shared by Arabica Robusta on 27 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • I essentially question the epistemological flaws surrounding the uses of the notion: when is it safe to call a politician, a political party or movement ‘populist’?
  • The stakes are high because to label someone as ‘populist’ is to imply that s/he is somehow a potential or real enemy of representative democracy. My critic refers to the ‘pernicious effects’ of populism which underlines the notion’s very negative connotation. Let me here reply to Catherine Fieschi’s major criticisms.
  • Cas Mudde, one of the major specialists on the subject, concedes that populism is a ‘thin-centred ideology’.
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • According to Michael Freeden’s ‘morphological analysis’, an ideology has its own ‘ineliminable’ core of values exercising control, with logically and culturally adjacent concepts that are further connected to peripheral concepts.
  • To point out that populism does not have the depth and sophistication of a political ideology is in no way an attempt to suggest that this is a ‘wishy-washy’ notion, even less to ‘to discourage analysts’, let alone ‘to bamboozle democrats’ as Catherine Fieschi alleges. No, it simply means testing the epistemological merits of the notion in order to reveal its heuristic limits.
  • In the 1930s, millions marched behind the banners of Fascism and Communism. Today, no one would die for a populist cause. Populism is no ideology simply because it offers no positive worldview. It is just a means to an end, a device to appeal to the masses.
  • Think for a moment: aren’t those amorphous policies of ‘mainstream’ parties responsible for their rising unpopularity and their decreasing credibility? Why should political scientists uncritically use the media clichés about ‘reasonable moderates’ opposing ‘undemocratic radicals/populists’?
  • It is a fact that populists thrive on ‘wounded’ democracies. But ‘wounded’ democracies are imperfectly run polities, where economic inequalities are dire, and where the elites have often broken their promises. Thus let’s not forget who provoked the ‘democratic fracture’ in the first place. Why do some political scientists seem oblivious to the fact that the ‘moderates’ who let down their electorates are mainly responsible for their own demise?
  • Again, the task of the political scientist should not be to condone or condemn this state of affairs, but to try to understand why people feel so disenfranchised. Consequently, the researcher should tackle and discuss the policies which make those populations suffer. Unfortunately, this is not something which most political scientists seem in the least concerned about. ‘Not to laugh, not to lament, not to detest, but to understand’ said Spinoza. Before looking down on the disoriented and angry voters who fall for the demagogues or dismissing all ‘radicals’ as undisputed ‘populists’, it would indeed be worth pausing for a moment to understand how those agents feel and to ask what they want. Political scientists should also wonder why more and more ‘moderate’ voters no longer believe in the enchanted world of ‘moderate politics’.
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Let Infographics Convey Information More Clearly Than Words Alone - 0 views

ericgyoung.amplify.com/...-more-clearly-than-words-alone useful infographics
shared by Eric G. Young on 09 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Eric G. Young on 09 Apr 10
     
    As this article from Webdesigner Depot aptly puts it, "Infographics can be a great way to quickly reference information." Infographics take advantage of the adage, "A picture is worth a thousand words," and the can give broader appeal to a message by tapping into the appetites of visually-oriented consumers.\n\nI find infographics particularly useful to help explain difficult or complex topics, and frequently make use of graphics applications like "mindmaps" in my own work. In fact, I wish my primary field would embrace more creative ways of conveying information to consumers and students. The legal world might be surprised to discover how much more interesting and informative the information would be.\n\nThis article contains infographics aimed primarily at web designers and those with a fairly advanced knowledge of technology. However, there are a number of infographics, such as no. 14, which I think do an excellent job of explaining how different social media outlets can be used by a business to attain different marketing goals. It takes no particular technical skill to understand the information displayed in no. 14, which is what makes it a good infographic for anyone.\n\nIf you are interested in this topic professionally, or you just want to look at some interesting graphics that convey information, check out the article. It's worth a look.
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In a pure coincidence, Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war - Glenn Greenw... - 0 views

www.salon.com/...index.html In a pure coincidence Gaddafi impeded U.S. oil interests before the war - Glenn Greenwald Salon.com
shared by thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • As usual, the ideas stigmatized with the most potent taboos are the ones that are the most obviously true.
  • thinkahol * on 13 Jun 11
     
    When the war in Libya began, the U.S. government convinced a large number of war supporters that we were there to achieve the very limited goal of creating a no-fly zone in Benghazi to protect civilians from air attacks, while President Obama specifically vowed that "broadening our military mission to include regime change would be a mistake."  This no-fly zone was created in the first week, yet now, almost three months later, the war drags on without any end in sight, and NATO is no longer even hiding what has long been obvious: that its real goal is exactly the one Obama vowed would not be pursued -- regime change through the use of military force.  We're in Libya to forcibly remove Gaddafi from power and replace him with a regime that we like better, i.e., one that is more accommodating to the interests of the West.  That's not even a debatable proposition at this point. What I suppose is debatable, in the most generous sense of that term, is our motive in doing this.  Why -- at a time when American political leaders feel compelled to advocate politically radioactive budget cuts to reduce the deficit and when polls show Americans solidly and increasingly opposed to the war -- would the U.S. Government continue to spend huge sums of money to fight this war?  Why is President Obama willing to endure self-evidently valid accusations -- even from his own Party -- that he's fighting an illegal war by brazenly flouting the requirements for Congressional approval?  Why would Defense Secretary Gates risk fissures by so angrily and publicly chiding NATO allies for failing to build more Freedom Bombs to devote to the war?  And why would we, to use the President's phrase, "stand idly by" while numerous other regimes -- including our close allies in Bahrain and Yemen and the one in Syria -- engage in attacks on their own people at least as heinous as those threatened by Gaddafi, yet be so devoted to targeting the Libyan leader?
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Lowering America's War Ceiling? | Truthout - 0 views

www.truth-out.org/...1312293573 Lowering America's War Ceiling? | Truthout
shared by thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11
     
    On July 25th, for instance, while John Boehner raced around the Capitol desperately pressing Republican House members for votes on a debt-ceiling bill that Harry Reid was calling dead-on-arrival in the Senate, America's new ambassador to Afghanistan, Ryan Crocker, took his oath of office in distant Kabul.  According to the New York Times, he then gave a short speech "warning" that "Western powers needed to 'proceed carefully'" and emphasized that when it came to the war, there would "be no rush for the exits." If, in Washington, people were rushing for those exits, no chance of that in Kabul almost a decade into America's second Afghan War.  There, the air strikes, night raids, assassinations, roadside bombs, and soldier and civilian deaths, we are assured, will continue to 2014 and beyond.  In a war in which every gallon of gas used by a fuel-guzzling US military costs $400 to $800 to import, time is no object and -- despite the panic in Washington over debt payments -- neither evidently is cost.
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Super Congress Debt Reduction Has Little Transparency - 0 views

www.huffingtonpost.com/...gress-debt-reduc_n_916151.html Super Congress Debt Reduction Has Little Transparency
shared by thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 03 Aug 11
     
    The text of the budget deal reached by President Barack Obama and congressional leaders contains few specific public disclosure provisions for the committee. The standing committees of Congress are allowed to send suggestions for ways to reduce the debt to the super committee members, but there is, as yet, no provision for the disclosure of those reports. The final report is required to be publicly disclosed upon completion, however there is no requirement that the report be placed online. There are also no official requirements for web-casting of committee meetings.
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The Healthcare Public Option And Other Short Stories - 0 views

politicsandfinance.blogspot.com/...e-public-option-and-other.html BIPARTISAN POLITICS HEALTHCARE JOE WILSON OBAMA ADMINISTRATION POLITICAL OPINION PUBLIC OPTION TRIGGER
shared by Michael Haltman on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Michael Haltman on 16 Sep 09
     
    A Rose By Any Other Name Or Speak No Evil, See No Evil, Hear No Evil Things have been a little quiet on the healthcare debate front over the past day or two, but the 800 pound gorilla is still in the room and is still very much alive and well. During this short lull I wanted to take a look at the critical public option piece for the program, and the fact that it is apparently losing its luster with many on the near left as a it remains a huge impediment to any legislation having a chance of being passed. And not getting something passed will doom the democrats in mid-term elections...
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Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death - 0 views

readersupportednews.org/...tion-to-osama-bin-ladens-death Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death
shared by thinkahol * on 08 May 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 08 May 11
     
    t's increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition - except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress "suspects." In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it "believed" that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn't know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence - which, as we soon learned, Washington didn't have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that "we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda." Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.
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Elections Have Consequences - 0 views

www.readersupportednews.org/...20-elections-have-consequences Elections Have Consequences
shared by thinkahol * on 17 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 17 Jul 11
     
    We are at a pivotal moment in American history, and many Americans watching the deficit talks in Washington are confused, perplexed, angry and frustrated. This country, which has paid its debts from Day 1, must pay its debts. Anyone who says it is not a big deal for this country to default clearly does not understand what he or she is talking about. This is a nation whose faith and credit has been the gold standard of countries throughout the world. Some people simply say we're not going to pay our debt, that there's nothing to really worry about. Those are people who are wishing our economy harm for political reasons, and those are people whose attitudes will have terrible consequences for virtually every working family in this country in terms of higher interest rates, in terms of significant job loss, in terms of making a very unstable global economy even more unstable. Our right-wing friends in the House of Representatives have given us an option. What they have said is end Medicare as we know it and force elderly people, many of whom don't have the money, to pay substantially more for their health care. So when you're 70 under their plan and you get sick and you don't have a whole lot of income, we don't know what happens to you. They forget to tell us that if their plan was passed you're going to have to pay a heck of a lot more for the prescription drugs you're getting today. They we're going to throw millions of kids off health insurance. If your mom or dad is in a nursing home and that nursing home bill is paid significantly by Medicaid and Medicaid isn't paying anymore, they forgot to tell us what happens to your mom or dad in that nursing home. What happens? And what happens today if you are unemployed and you're not able to get unemployment extension? What happens if you are a middle-class family desperately trying to send their kids to college and you make savage cuts to Pell grants and you can't go to college? What does it mean for the nation if we
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Michael Moore Kills Capitalism with Kool-Aid - Michael W. Covel - Mises Institute - 0 views

mises.org/3751 capitalism micheal moore review
shared by Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09 - Cached
  • Oh sure, in theory I would like to see everyone with their own homestead, money in their pocket for regular shopping frenzies, and no health worries despite eating at Burger King 24/7, but arriving at those goals is not exactly doable unless government robs Peter to pay Paul and/or starts up the printing press.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      This analysis totally overlooks where real wealth originates from: not from dollars printed by the government or even the redistribution of taxes. It originates from what working class people produce, and what capialist thugs mainly profit off of.
  • And that view of course puts me in opposition to Moore since he has no problem with government as his and our father figure. That is his utopia. He truly believes that warehouses of federal workers, in Washington, D.C., remotely running our lives is the optimal plan. He is an unapologetic socialist who really doesn't care why the poor are poor or the rich are rich, he just wants it fixed. So not surprisingly — and with some generalization as I proffer this — Democrats like Moore and Republicans don't.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      This is not the point he made in the movie. He makes the argument that workers should control and profite from what they produce.
  • I don't care one way or the other that he has that view and I am not knocking union workers, but Moore sees the world through a class-warfare lens resulting in a certain agenda: force wealth to be spread amongst everyone regardless of effort.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      So you think it's perfectly okay for individuals to have a net worth of millions and billions of dollars while the people who produce the wealth should not profit from their work?
  • ...8 more annotations...
  • We listen to heartbreaking stories of foreclosed families across America — but we don't learn why the foreclosures happened. Did these people treat their homes as piggy banks? Was there refinancing on top of refinancing just to keep buying mall trinkets and other goodies with no respect to risk or logic? We don't find out.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      Yes, we do learn the source of foreclosures. It's banks raising interest rates that people can't possibly pay. It's people making huge amounts of money off the misfortunes of others.
  • $1,000 for cleaning out the house that they were just evicted from. Was it sad? Yes. But should we end capitalism due to this one family in Peoria, IL?
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      He presents this as represenetive example.
  • There is a lengthy dissertation on the evils of Goldman Sachs. He rips Robert Rubin and Hank Paulson big time, and I agree with him. In fact, I said to myself, "Moore, you should have done your whole film on Goldman Sachs!"
  • As FDR concluded and the film ended, I was shocked at the reaction. The theater of 400-plus spectators stood and cheered wildly at FDR's 1944 proposal. The questions running through my head were immediate: how does one legislate words like useful, enough, recreation, adequate, decent, and good? Who decides all of this and to what degree?
  • So that the record of history is absolutely crystal clear: that there is no alternative way so far discovered of improving the lot of the ordinary people that can hold a candle to the productive activities that are unleashed by a free enterprise system.
  • Friedman's logic was what I was remembering as a theater full of people cheered wildly for a second Bill of Rights. How did this film crowd actually think FDR's 1944 vision could be executed? Frankly, it was clear to me at that moment that capitalism is on shaky ground. From Bush "abandoning" capitalism to bailouts for everyone, to Obama gifting away the future, we seriously might be past the point of no return toward a socialization of America.
  • This film did not make me angry, but it did punch me in the gut. The people in that theater with me, including Moore, were not bad people. They just seem to all have consumed a lethal dose of Kool-Aid.
    • Bakari Chavanu
      Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
       
      What Kool-aid are you talking about? What other system is really challenging capitalism? Not even the government is the real kool-aid when you've already noted that it works on behalf of the corporate class.
  • Moore sees Reagan entering the scene as a shill for corporate-banking interests.
  • Bakari Chavanu on 03 Oct 09
     
    I include my reacations to this review in which I think Covel misleads readers about Moore's movie.
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No evidence that WikiLeaks releases have hurt anyone - 11/28/2010 | MiamiHerald.com - 0 views

www.miamiherald.com/...e-that-wikileaks-releases.html No evidence that WikiLeaks releases have hurt anyone - 11_28_2010 | MiamiHerald.com
shared by thinkahol * on 01 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 01 Dec 10
     
    American officials in recent days have warned repeatedly that the release of documents by WikiLeaks could put people's lives in danger. But despite similar warnings before the previous two releases of classified U.S. intelligence reports by the website, U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date that the documents led to anyone's death.
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America Is Out of Control - The American Magazine - 0 views

www.american.com/...america-is-out-of-control america control american magazine
shared by Joe La Fleur on 03 May 12 - No Cached
  • Joe La Fleur on 03 May 12
     
    NO LEADER = NO CONTROL
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ISLAMOPHOBIA IS A REAL DANGER FOR ISLAM - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/bia-is-a-real-danger-for-islam ISLAMOPHOBIA enemies of islam
shared by Muslim Academy on 29 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 29 Aug 12
     
    Islam is a religion of peace and purity. No doubt every single word of love, affection and optimism can be used for this religion. It is that religion on the earth which is not difficult to follow. What makes a Muslim say that his religion is the best? What is it which attracts a non-Muslim to turn into a Muslim? Surely, there is something! A Jewish living in Australia himself carried a research on all the religions including Islam in depth and the reason for him being so curious about knowing Islam was his neighbor. He was really impressed by him. From the way he lived his life till the way he worshiped the one he believed. He stated, "Islam is the best religion." This was the first half of his sentence but the other half was quite disappointing for him as well as the stupendous Muslims. He stated in the next half sentence, "but unfortunately with majority of worst followers of it." Now what is supposed to be noticed are the words "worst people." These are those people of have ruined the reputation of Islam and are the main cause of American Islamophobia. Their brutal and cruel acts of spreading Islam in the modern era or taking revenge from the non-believers have simply dug the REAL image of the Islamic community, its ethics and culture. Islamophobia is a danger because many Muslims fear the day when rest of the world will completely boycott from them and they will not have any kind of support. No doubt, the religion permits to carry out "Jihad" which is a war in the way of Allah against the non-believers who do respect their religion. All they need is to live peacefully but what annoys them is when a non-believer who does not even know even a bit of their religion, insults them on being Muslims or underestimates their religion along with disobeying the one they worship. On the other way while we observed what the image that Muslims have throughout the world we find that Islamophobia is still having a severe affect on the lives of innocent Mu
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Anti U.S. protests in Pakistan - 0 views

muslim-academy.com/anti-u-s-protests-in-pakistan Anti U.S. protests in Pakistan against Muhammad(P.B.U.H) Movie
shared by Muslim Academy on 15 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Muslim Academy on 15 Sep 12
     
    Series of protests took place all over the world and didn't spare Pakistan - Muslim country. Muslims around the country came up with huge anger and disappointment against the making of anti-Islam film. In many other parts of the world, protests captured huge attention of the international media as U.S. embassies were burnt and stormed. For instance, Egypt, Syria, Yemen etc. Muslims gathered in a great number and raised their voice against the making of the film. In some parts of the world, U.S. flag had been burnt and replaced with a black flag having words written on it as "There is no God but God, and Mohammad is his messenger" A small budget movie named "innocence of the Muslims" was made by an individual of California and put over the internet. This movie didn't get any attention until the subtitles were poste din Arabic and sent to the Egyptian journalists. Movie made humiliates the sentiments of the Muslims as it tried to shun the image of beloved Prophet (peace and blessings upon him). Movie made touches the themes of paedophilia and homosexuality. In Pakistan, security measured were tightened by the local police and made sure no violence hit and destroy U.S. embassy. Recently, violence hit the security of the U.S. embassies in many Muslim countries. Many U.S. embassies such as in Egypt, Libya, Yemen were stormed by the protestors greatly. The brazen attack on the U.S embassy also killed an American; the angry souls were tickled by "video linked to Florida pastor Terry Jones, whose public burning of the Koran in 2010 led to deadly protests in Afghanistan. The film reportedly mocks the prophet Muhammad." as per the sources.
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The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality - Salon.com - 0 views

www.salon.com/...singleton The due-process-free assassination of U.S. citizens is now reality - Salon.com
shared by thinkahol * on 09 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 09 Nov 11
     
    What amazes me most whenever I write about this topic is recalling how terribly upset so many Democrats pretended to be when Bush claimed the power merely to detain or even just eavesdrop on American citizens without due process.  Remember all that?  Yet now, here's Obama claiming the power not to detain or eavesdrop on citizens without due process, but to kill them; marvel at how the hardest-core White House loyalists now celebrate this and uncritically accept the same justifying rationale used by Bush/Cheney (this is war! the President says he was a Terrorist!) without even a moment of acknowledgment of the profound inconsistency or the deeply troubling implications of having a President - even Barack Obama - vested with the power to target U.S. citizens for murder with no due process. Also, during the Bush years, civil libertarians who tried to convince conservatives to oppose that administration's radical excesses would often ask things like this: would you be comfortable having Hillary Clinton wield the power to spy on your calls or imprison you with no judicial reivew or oversight?  So for you good progressives out there justifying this, I would ask this:  how would the power to assassinate U.S. citizens without due process look to you in the hands of, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann?
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The Moment When the Police Lost the Occupy Portland Narrative | Blogtown, PDX - 0 views

blogtown.portlandmercury.com/...occupy-portland Moment When the Police Lost Occupy Portland Narrative | Blogtown PDX
shared by thinkahol * on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • thinkahol * on 18 Nov 11
     
    Well, it turned. The police bureau is starting to crack after six weeks of Occupy Portland. And one picture, right here, crystallizes the precise moment when it happened. During a choreographed effort to pull a few dozen protesters out of the Chase bank branch outside Pioneer Square, part of today's hundreds-strong N17 day of action, Portland police officers resorted to a decidedly more muscular show of force in a clash watched by TV cameras and rush-hour commuters earlier this evening. Suddenly all the fun-the dance parties, the union songs, the peaceful arrests earlier on the Steel Bridge and at Wells Fargo-was for naught. Tromping in with mounted officers, they pushed marchers who had gathered on the sidewalks along SW Yamhill into the street-forcing them to block MAX trains, something no one was doing until the heavily armored riot squad showed up-and then poked and, for the first time, pepper-sprayed the marchers. Significantly, some of the spraying came after protesters had clearly retreated to the opposite sidewalk. (In another odd shift, there also was no federal-court-required verbal PA warning that chemical munitions would be deployed-a hallmark of every other mass police action to date.) Meanwhile, at almost the very same moment, Police Chief Mike Reese was on TV blaming Occupy Portland for his officers' inability to respond to a rape victim for three hours today. Consider that tantamount to a declaration of war. Reese's point? Officers are tired and have been too distracted to do their main jobs: responding to actual crimes. It was an attempt to spin sentiment against the movement, which seems to be attracting adherents. Even the O today said the movement is "building momentum" and said the average age of some 34 arrestees earlier today was 50-not a bunch of young, anarchists/punks/hoodlums/hippies/road warriors etc. But that might come back to haunt him, judging by a wave of outrage on Twitter and elsewhere among those who noted that it
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Tax Cuts Caused The Deficits, Therefore... | OurFuture.org - 0 views

www.ourfuture.org/...cuts-caused-deficits-therefore tax cuts caused deficits
shared by thinkahol * on 29 Jun 10 - Cached
  • thinkahol * on 29 Jun 10
     
    No serious person denies that Reagan's 1981 tax cuts and military increases threw the country into a pattern of borrowing and borrowing that we have not escaped. When Reagan took office the national debt was $995 billion. When Reagan left office it was $2.87 trillion and climbing fast. No serious person denies that Bush's 2001 tax cuts and continued military increases dramatically worsened the problem. Bush's last budget year ended with a record single-year deficit of $1.4 trillion. As the country discusses what to do about the borrowing the elephant in the room is that everyone understands that restoring top tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting the military budget in half would solve the problem completely. But we can't do that. We can't even discuss it. And we all know why. And we all know why. It is because the Reagan Revolution transformed the country from a democracy to a plutocracy -- a country run by and for the wealthy. Such sensible and simple ideas are considered off-limits. To even bring up the idea of restoring tax rates to pre-Reagan levels and cutting military spending invites terrible consequences. The speaker risks becoming the target of the money's noise machine: Limbaugh, Hannity, Drudge, Fox. Smears. Humiliation. Banishment. Or the noise machine cranks up a campaign of misinformation, convincing people --especially DC people -- that what they see in front of their eyes just isn't so. Repeat it enough and it becomes solid knowledge. We all know this is the way it is. So don't tell me that "we don't have the money" to keep 300,000 teachers from being laid off, or to help the long-term, mostly older unemployed workers get something to live on and keep their health care. The money is right there in front of us, but the Congress is bought and paid for. What do we do? We have to demand representatives who represent us, not make excuses for representing the wealthy. The unfortunate, poor and disadvantaged must count every bit as much as the
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