Which Side Are You On?

[midcan5]

In the mid fifties, "generosity was voted the most conspicuous American characteristic, followed by friendliness, understanding, piety, love of freedom, and progressivism. The American faults listed were petty: shallowness, egotism, extravagance, preoccupation with money, and selfishness." William Manchester in "The Glory and the Dream" quoting George Gallup's Institute of public opinion.

The past is often a fantasy, it seems human nature only remembers what it desires or dislikes about the past, reality is far away. The sixties brought an incredible reaction and FDR and LBJ's attempts to create a more just and fair society bothered the well heeled. Add in the another stupid war Vietnam and you have a requirement for a scapegoat. Find a scapegoat and you establish focus. History is full of this stuff. Another change was the growth of the 'Contented' class as Galbraith names them. Once you have yours the others don't count and the past confirms it.

"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilised underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment

Judt's book is insightful. "For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land' [ame=http://www.amazon.com/Ill-Fares-Land-Tony-Judt/dp/1594202761/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8]Amazon.com: Ill Fares the Land (9781594202766): Tony Judt: Books[/ame]

 

[georgephillip]

Mine, of course. That's why I don't support Democrats or Republicans - because they're not. They do what's best for them.

I don't know what happened to this nation and its people over the last 40 - 50 years, but this isn't the same America I grew up in. I've lived almost 3/4s of a century and look back on a nation that would have never backed a quitter under any circumstances. A nation that would have marched into Washington D.C. demanding the return of its billions of hard-earned tax dollars shamelessly given to criminals, shysters and other flim-flammers. A nation that would have flipped off the likes of bin Laden and his merry band of terrorists. And more importantly a nation of people who would have held themselves, their freedoms and their ideals far above the political machinations of any elected officials, career politicians or power-crazy madmen.

I'm on the side of those people - but damned if I can figure out where they went.

The last 40 of my 64 years in this country have been called "The Great Divergence."

We had the "Roaring Twenties" followed by the Great Depression and WWII, and then the US experienced about three decades often called "The Great Leveling". Starting with the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 the richest Americans began to roll back the Great Leveling until today we see economic inequality reaching the same level as 1929.

Think back to September 2008 and the warning author Naomi Klein had for America:

“'Whatever the events of this week mean, nobody should believe the overblown claims that the market crisis signals the death of "free market’ ideology.'”

"Then the meltdown went nuclear.

"Klein warned: 'Free market ideology has always been a servant to the interests of capital, and its presence ebbs and flows depending on its usefulness to those interests. During boom times, it’s profitable to preach laissez faire, because an absentee government allows speculative bubbles to inflate.”

"But 'when those bubbles burst, the ideology becomes a hindrance, and it goes dormant while big government rides to the rescue.' Remember: A week later Paulson was on his knee, begging House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for that $787 billion bailout, to save our incompetent Wall Street banks that caused the meltdown from certain bankruptcy.

“'But rest assured,' continued Klein in September 2008, Reaganomics 'ideology will come roaring back when the bailouts are done. The massive debts the public is accumulating to bail out the speculators will then become part of a global budget crisis that will be the rationalization for deep cuts to social programs, and for a renewed push to privatize.'”

New Civil War erupts, led by super rich, GOP - MarketWatch

I agree this isn't the same America I grew up in.
And I wonder how much worse it will become over the next 40 years.

 

[bripat9643]

The Constitution once protected US citizens from warrantless surveillance in their homes.

Remember?

What does that have to do with habeas corpus? Are you able to keep track of what you said in a previous post?

 

[georgephillip]

Which should make it relatively easy for a "proud" conservative to explain why neo-cons embrace the Second Amendment yet decline to apply the Constitution to the denial of habeas corpus? Is it pride, vanity or stupidity that enables neo-cons to defend the 2010 Citizens United ruling "even though the Constitution grants no rights to corporations and the Founding Fathers warned against the excessive power of monied interests."

Do you personally think it's coincidental Corporate personhood was enshrined at the same time Jim Crow and the Robber Barrons reared their rich, white conservative heads?

See if you can refute the message and not the messenger, for once.

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

The Constitution doesn't protect enemy combatants caught on the battlefield without a uniform.

The Constitution once protected US citizens from warrantless surveillance in their homes.

Remember?

You're confused.

 

[Too Tall]

profit

Why were they not profitable?

In the case of the steel mills, they were old and not equipped to produce profitably. So, Reagan gave steel makers a tax break. I'm assuming the windfall was to retool their works and get competative again. But, for example, US Steel diversified and bought Aristech Chemical then they shuttered their mills and shipped the equipment to Asia.

Rubbermaid couod not produce their products at a price point acceptable to Wal*Mart. Wal*Mart encouraged Rubbermaid to box up the factory and send it to China so Rubbermaid products could be sold at a price acceptable to Wal*Mart.

Interesting! The steel mills were 'old' and not 'equipped' to make a profit so they shipped the 'old equipment' to Asia. I say nonsense.

High taxes and unreasonable union demands put them out of business is just my guess.

 

[Poli_Sigh]

The Constitution once protected US citizens from warrantless surveillance in their homes.

Remember?

The age old conundrum - nothing can protect against men without principle, morals or conscience whose primary motivation is self-serving.

 

[Poli_Sigh]

Interesting! The steel mills were 'old' and not 'equipped' to make a profit so they shipped the 'old equipment' to Asia. I say nonsense.

High taxes and unreasonable union demands put them out of business is just my guess.

Oh I think cheap foreign labor helped too. Before Reagan threw this nation into the World Market, perhaps he might have thought about a labor force making $10 an hour competing with a labor force glad to make $10 a month. So before you start blaming all the wrong reasons, try on a couple of new ones, like the unmitigated greed of big business.

By the way had management acknowledged early on the reality that it needed labor in order to achieve success, there would have been no need for those nasty old labor unions to form in the first place. I believe it's called doing the right thing. Something Winston Churchill observed that America did only after trying everything else.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Wrong.
You're corporate.

Anxious for a return of the Robber Barons?

"The Robber Baron Era was a period of misery for the millions of Americans who worked in factories before child labor laws, the eight-hour day and 40-hour work week, workplace safety laws (think of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), or recognition of collective bargaining rights.

"It was a time of widespread political corruption, with officeholders in cahoots with the chiefs of monopolies and near-monopolies. Laissez-faire capitalism was mostly unchecked by the power of unions or by government regulation. It ended with a period of widespread labor unrest and the reforms of the Progressive Era (1890s through the 1920s)."

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

Common Dreams? They should rename that site to Common Drug-Fueled Paranoid Fantasies.

Neocons! Booga booga!

Which should make it relatively easy for a "proud" conservative to explain why neo-cons embrace the Second Amendment yet decline to apply the Constitution to the denial of habeas corpus? Is it pride, vanity or stupidity that enables neo-cons to defend the 2010 Citizens United ruling "even though the Constitution grants no rights to corporations and the Founding Fathers warned against the excessive power of monied interests."

Do you personally think it's coincidental Corporate personhood was enshrined at the same time Jim Crow and the Robber Barrons reared their rich, white conservative heads?

See if you can refute the message and not the messenger, for once.

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

Looks like your dopey thread and your premise that there is a battle has been blown to smithereens.
Now you're simply trying to deflect and dodge with a bunch of nonsense.
Jim Crow...
If you wanted to start a thread on civil rights, you should have.
Look Georgie, you have an anti corp, anti capitalist bias. You give the impression that you'd rather government confiscate all wealth, keep the lion's share and distribute the crumbs for the masses.
Government appears to be your hero and your mommy and daddy.
You have no right to expect others to simply surrender to your ideas. And not wishing to do so does not make us bad people.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Jones and Lauglin Steel. Bethlehem Steel. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel. US Steel. Rubbermaid. Sterling China Co. Louthan Foundry.


Just some of the privately owned corporations which have abandoned America. They took the works. The factories, the jobs, the opportunities for working families to make a good future here and sent them all to Asia and Mexico.

That's why I don't trust corporatations. They get the best from American workers and then fold up their tents and steal away in search of greater profits. I wonder how they (the corporations) can still imagine having paying customers when they take the jobs away.

What drove those companies away?

Greed.

The same thing driving the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
The same thing driving Israel's occupation of Area C and Gaza.
The same thing driving "Government" Sachs.
The same thing driving the wealth inequality in the US.

Which side are you on?

Greed.HA!!!!
all you lily livered liberals want government to perform money grabs in the hopes government will give some of the money to YOU!!!!
So who's the greedy one now, genius?

 

[thereisnospoon]

Jones and Lauglin Steel. Bethlehem Steel. Wheeling Pittsburgh Steel. US Steel. Rubbermaid. Sterling China Co. Louthan Foundry.


Just some of the privately owned corporations which have abandoned America. They took the works. The factories, the jobs, the opportunities for working families to make a good future here and sent them all to Asia and Mexico.

That's why I don't trust corporatations. They get the best from American workers and then fold up their tents and steal away in search of greater profits. I wonder how they (the corporations) can still imagine having paying customers when they take the jobs away.

One common feature of all of those firms is .......high labor costs.
Because labor consists of the largest percentage of manufacturing combined with global competition add in high taxes, crushing regulations and idiotic free trade agreements with inferior economies we have a loss of manufacturing jobs.
One poster on here used John Deere as an example in this context...The OP made reference to JD's plant in China...What he failed to mention is there is just ONE plant there. 59 manufacturing plants are here in the US.
Of course one with an agenda never allows facts to get in the way of a good rant.

There was another thread here a few months ago all breathless about China's new fighter and how it was going to outclass everything we have. Yes, it's a decent airframe. What they doom-sayers didn't take into account, however, is that without engines, it's nothing. And China lacks the technology and the know-how to make their own quality jet turbine engines. They have to buy them from overseas.

If China's making John Deere tractors, it's only because America showed them how.

It's a John Deere manufacturing plant that happens to be located in China. After that and the fact the workers are Chinese, it's all the same.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Anybody remember Archie and Edith?

"Everybody pulled his weight.
Didn't need no welfare state...
Those were the days!"

Archie Bunker, protagonist of the popular 1970s TV sitcom "All in the Family" and today's Tea Party movement seem to share a misconception of just how "conservative" the 1930s, 40s and 50s actually were.

Were those decades a time when hard-working Americans pulled themselves up by their own bootstraps?

"It's true that Americans worked hard during these years.

"But the bootstraps stuff is nonsense.

"The 30s through 50s were the time of the New Deal, low-cost loans from the Federal Housing Administration, the GI Bill, huge subsidies for defense contractors during the Cold War and other industries that employed millions of people, massive transfer of funding from cities to the burgeoning suburbs, federal projects like interstate highway construction and the space program, generous investment in public schools, record union membership, high tax rates for corporations and the wealthy, good job benefits, and Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which ensured financial stability in old age and medical crises...

"On the evidence of history, calling today's Republican Party and their Tea Party supporters 'conservative' is as absurd as calling supporters of civil rights and racial justice 'reactionary' because they invoke the values of the Reconstruction Era."

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

Oh...Ok....Nice try Gerogie..
Back then, this was called a "hand up". Now it's viewed as an expected "hand out".
Too many of us look upon social saafety nets as " you owe me".
That's the difference.
BTW, never refer to taxes and "forced sacrifice" as investments. An investment in it's concept has a potrential for positive financial return.
Government plans LOSE money. All of them. As a matter of fact,, govt programs are over stuffed inefficient bureaucracies that cosnume taxpayer resources and look to consume more.

Were those who fought WWII "owed" the GI Bill?

How about their children, the millions of boomers now facing retirement?
Are they "owed" Social Security and Medicare benefits they've contributed to for decades?

Taxes are investments in democracy.
They fund the infrastructure that enables corporations to exist, much less prosper by outsourcing.
What has greater potential for positive financial return than public education?

For thousands of years all governments have socialized costs and privatized profits for the benefit of a small percentage of humanity. It's time to privatize many of the costs and start socializing most of the profits for the majority of humanity.

Oh please. You're now Archie Bunker. You're doing the very thing to which you object. You're waxing nostalgic in order to support your point.
The GI Bill which allowed veterans to obtain mortgages at lower rates. The program is no one the overstuffed and inefficient welfare programs which burn up nearly half their budgets in administrative costs.
Who said government schools are superior? Beg to differ. Private and now Charter schools produce better students, graduate at a higher percentage and send a far higher percentage of those graduates to college.
The reasons why public schools exist is because of teacher's unions, the ability of local authorities to levy taxes for whatever purpose they see fit and because of a perception that private schools are enclaves for the wealthiest kids.
Every year taxpayers pour hundreds of billions of dollars into public school systems. Some are successful most are not. Many inner city school systems and many in rural areas are terrible. All that aside the one aspect that comes about when government officials are challenged with questions regarding failing schools....money. And what has government done every single time? They have increased taxes. They have this idiotic belief that one can solve a problem by throwing money at it. With public schools, that has NEVER worked.
I'm going to save you a lot of typing. Please stop using other people's material and posting it here. All this stuff of "common dreams" and "public good"...this is all scary socialist/communist stuff that you are getting form far left radical blogs.
Stop posting that shit here.
If a socialist utopia is your vision for the US, then say so. Stop hiding behind these people from which you get your opinions. Be a man and say what you want.

 

[daveman]

Wrong.
You're corporate.

Anxious for a return of the Robber Barons?

"The Robber Baron Era was a period of misery for the millions of Americans who worked in factories before child labor laws, the eight-hour day and 40-hour work week, workplace safety laws (think of the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), or recognition of collective bargaining rights.

"It was a time of widespread political corruption, with officeholders in cahoots with the chiefs of monopolies and near-monopolies. Laissez-faire capitalism was mostly unchecked by the power of unions or by government regulation. It ended with a period of widespread labor unrest and the reforms of the Progressive Era (1890s through the 1920s)."

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

Common Dreams? They should rename that site to Common Drug-Fueled Paranoid Fantasies.

Neocons! Booga booga!

Which should make it relatively easy for a "proud" conservative to explain why neo-cons embrace the Second Amendment yet decline to apply the Constitution to the denial of habeas corpus? Is it pride, vanity or stupidity that enables neo-cons to defend the 2010 Citizens United ruling "even though the Constitution grants no rights to corporations and the Founding Fathers warned against the excessive power of monied interests."

Do you personally think it's coincidental Corporate personhood was enshrined at the same time Jim Crow and the Robber Barrons reared their rich, white conservative heads?

See if you can refute the message and not the messenger, for once.

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

The message is self-refuting, as it's not based on reality.

But let me ask you this: Do you think labor unions should engage in political activity and make donations to candidates?

 

[thereisnospoon]

I'm on the good guys' side.

Do you know what side is that?

It's whatever side I'm on.

Sounds slightly circular.

"I like to say I'm more conservative than Goldwater. He just wanted to turn the clock back to when there was no income tax. I want to turn the clock back to when people lived in small villages and took care of each other." -- Pete Seeger"

Pete or Barry?

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

Fail...once again you post the words of another person instead of your own.
Who cares what Pete fucking Seeger thinks or thought during a moment of drug induced euphoria.

 

[daveman]

One common feature of all of those firms is .......high labor costs.
Because labor consists of the largest percentage of manufacturing combined with global competition add in high taxes, crushing regulations and idiotic free trade agreements with inferior economies we have a loss of manufacturing jobs.
One poster on here used John Deere as an example in this context...The OP made reference to JD's plant in China...What he failed to mention is there is just ONE plant there. 59 manufacturing plants are here in the US.
Of course one with an agenda never allows facts to get in the way of a good rant.

There was another thread here a few months ago all breathless about China's new fighter and how it was going to outclass everything we have. Yes, it's a decent airframe. What they doom-sayers didn't take into account, however, is that without engines, it's nothing. And China lacks the technology and the know-how to make their own quality jet turbine engines. They have to buy them from overseas.

If China's making John Deere tractors, it's only because America showed them how.

It's a John Deere manufacturing plant that happens to be located in China. After that and the fact the workers are Chinese, it's all the same.

I'll bet the engineers on site are American, too.

 

[thereisnospoon]

Which should make it relatively easy for a "proud" conservative to explain why neo-cons embrace the Second Amendment yet decline to apply the Constitution to the denial of habeas corpus? Is it pride, vanity or stupidity that enables neo-cons to defend the 2010 Citizens United ruling "even though the Constitution grants no rights to corporations and the Founding Fathers warned against the excessive power of monied interests."

Do you personally think it's coincidental Corporate personhood was enshrined at the same time Jim Crow and the Robber Barrons reared their rich, white conservative heads?

See if you can refute the message and not the messenger, for once.

Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality | Common Dreams

The Constitution doesn't protect enemy combatants caught on the battlefield without a uniform.

The Constitution once protected US citizens from warrantless surveillance in their homes.

Remember?

still does..unless of course one has been communicating with known international terrorists or terror sympathizers.
Hey, sunshine your guy here in the White House wants the authority to take over and even stop the internet. Talk about paranoid.

 

[georgephillip]

Agreed, Sparky.

I just don't see how we'll ever accomplish a real Change of that magnitude by "choosing" between Democrat OR Republican in the voting booth.

a one party system, the $$$ party, cloaked in rhetorials engineered toward the illusion of choice George... This is why any 3rd party is usually demonized , and summarily dismissed btw...

Wall Street and the richest 1% of Americans control both major parties in this country through campaign donations primarily.

With the rare exception of a Senator Sanders or a Kucinich or Ron Paul (?) limiting change to Republican OR Democrat Changes Nothing fundamental about the class war.

they're painted radical for opting out of the status quo, the usual class envy canards follow them like ugly on an ape

FLUSH a hundred (or two or three) Republicans AND Democrats from DC in a single news cycle and replace them with established third party candidates already on many ballots (primarily Greens and Libertarians) and Wall Street and the Pentagon have problems they have never seen before. (and so do the rest of us)

well, we're talking epidemic proportions now, the rubicon's been crossed....

The internet makes it conceivable to motivate the 30 to 40 percent of eligible voters who usually don't see anything worth voting FOR to get involved and vote AGAINST the status quo.

agreed the 'net can be enlightening, for those who effectively utilize it's depth and breath.

in fact, were i wearing my tin hat, i'd lay claim it's actively monitored

If (when) the US economy deteriorates to such an extent that as many Americans are paying attention to politics in the same way we did during the week after 911, that's when I expect the state to begin actively interfering with cyberspace.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any possibility of winning the class war without more people paying attention.

 

[bripat9643]

If (when) the US economy deteriorates to such an extent that as many Americans are paying attention to politics in the same way we did during the week after 911, that's when I expect the state to begin actively interfering with cyberspace.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any possibility of winning the class war without more people paying attention.

No one wins the class war. It's a suicide pact.

 

[georgephillip]

In the mid fifties, "generosity was voted the most conspicuous American characteristic, followed by friendliness, understanding, piety, love of freedom, and progressivism. The American faults listed were petty: shallowness, egotism, extravagance, preoccupation with money, and selfishness." William Manchester in "The Glory and the Dream" quoting George Gallup's Institute of public opinion.

The past is often a fantasy, it seems human nature only remembers what it desires or dislikes about the past, reality is far away. The sixties brought an incredible reaction and FDR and LBJ's attempts to create a more just and fair society bothered the well heeled. Add in the another stupid war Vietnam and you have a requirement for a scapegoat. Find a scapegoat and you establish focus. History is full of this stuff. Another change was the growth of the 'Contented' class as Galbraith names them. Once you have yours the others don't count and the past confirms it.

"To serve contentment, there were and are three basic requirements. One is the need to defend the general limitation on government as regards the economy; there must be a doctrine that offers a feasible presumption against government intervention...The second, more specific need is to find social justification for the untrammeled, uninhibited pursuit and possession of wealth....There is need for demonstration that the pursuit of wealth or even less spectacular well-being serves a serious, even grave social purpose....The third need is to justify a reduced sense of public responsibility for the poor. Those so situated, the members of the functional and socially immobilised underclass, must, in some very real way, be seen as the architects of their own fate. If not, they could be, however marginally, on the conscience of the comfortable." John Kenneth Galbraith, The Culture of Contentment

Judt's book is insightful. "For anyone born after 1945, the welfare state and its institutions were not a solution to earlier dilemmas: they were simply the normal conditions of life - and more than a little dull. The baby boomers, entering university in the mid sixties, had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility and - perhaps above all - an indefinable but ubiquitous sense of security. The goals of an earlier generation of reformers were no longer of interest to their successors. On the contrary they were increasingly perceived as restrictions upon the self-expression and freedom of the individual." Tony Judt 'Ill Fares the Land' Amazon.com: Ill Fares the Land (9781594202766): Tony Judt: Books

As someone born in 1947 I fit right into the boomers who "had only ever known the world of improving life chances, generous medical and educational services, optimistic prospects of a upward social mobility..." and of course the Cold War.

It is so obvious looking back at the 70s (followed by Reagan's Revolution) at the beginning of our Great Divergence of incomes. Maybe those "goals of an earlier generation of reformers" were noticeable to those who went to college, but they were invisible to me. I expect they are even more opaque to today's generations.

 

[sparky]

If (when) the US economy deteriorates to such an extent that as many Americans are paying attention to politics in the same way we did during the week after 911, that's when I expect the state to begin actively interfering with cyberspace.

Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be any possibility of winning the class war without more people paying attention.

No one wins the class war. It's a suicide pact.

The kernel of truth to that is found in history , not to mention the many ongoing conflicts we're reading on right now



or, in a more Morganesqe directness of the general populace> They can always buy one 1/2 to kill the other 1/2

 

[sparky]

It is so obvious looking back at the 70s (followed by Reagan's Revolution) at the beginning of our Great Divergence of incomes. Maybe those "goals of an earlier generation of reformers" were noticeable to those who went to college, but they were invisible to me. I expect they are even more opaque to today's generations.

The great Compression, or so it's dubbed to portray the disparity /escape from it / return to it

and in honesty, we all rode the me-me-me-me bandwagon of Mammonism towards that result we're now arguing about George

Greed wrapped in entitlement and arrogance is still greed, and all the Reagan worship in washington (or here) can't hide it imho....