wv wrote:

Yes, BT, Friedmen makes me crazy. I can only read him once or twice a year.

And notice how breezily he writes about “managing” weak countries. As if thats the US Government’s job. Can you IMAGINE what the NY Times would say if
other countries talked openly about ‘managing’ America ?

Empire. Imperialism. It makes me ill.

w
v

Agreed. It’s not our job, or place, or right, or business. And, of course, imperialism isn’t just horrific for other nations; it ends up being horrific for Americans too. Blowback, endless wars, the concentration of resources in the MIC instead of education, health care, the environment, food safety, clean water, etc. etc.

It’s dead wrong and profoundly immoral that we do this to others. But it also ends up hurting “we the people.”

Time for the empire to die. No more hegemons. I don’t know how to accomplish that . . . but history shows us they’re always massively destructive, on the way up and on the way down. Will we ever reach the point where we say no to them, period? No gods, no masters at home, no masters far away, no nation-state masters, no group of nation-state masters, no economic masters, etc. etc.

To me, the threat against our national parks is a threat against quality of life itself. It’s a huge leap toward closing off most of nature to those who are rich enough to afford their own views, their thousand acres, their streams, lakes, mountains, etc.

It’s easily one of the ugliest ideas that the odious Republicans have ever come up with, and they’ve come up with thousands of them.

While this gets almost no press, to me, it’s far more important than things like same-sex marriage rights, though I support that 100% — and we obviously can tackle both issues at the same time. But this gets down to the very root of our existence, the land itself, who it belongs to, and our ability to take in the natural beauty that surrounds us.

One of my novels — which still needs revision — is set in a future world which is all private. There is no public sector. We have corporate states. And everyone has to pay to move from one private zone to the next. No public parks. No access to anything you don’t own, unless you pay the fare, etc. It’s a Sci-Fi novel, but it seems real life keeps catching up to Science Fiction.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

And you’re forgetting that others helped pay your way throughout your life. You went to public schools, right? Why should people who have no kids pay for your schooling? But they do. They did. They have for more than two centuries. That’s what sane societies do.

Mandatory schooling is so society can have a steady supply of capable people to go into the necessary disciplines required for modern life. Those disciplines are used by people who do not have kids too.

I don’t see education that way at all. It’s not there to herd the masses into becoming useful fodder for capitalists, or mass consumers. It’s there to teach children to think for themselves, learn to think critically, independently, and decide what they want to do with their own lives on their own. It’s there to radically open their horizons and give them the tools they need to reach their fullest potential. Colleges and universities further expand this, open up new worlds for students they might never see without it, and you benefit from this expansion of cultural, social and intellectual horizons as well. We all do.

I still have no idea why you would be against pitching in a few extra dollars to make colleges and universities free for everyone. If it were up to me, the vast majority of the costs would be borne by the rich, primarily because they’ve seen the vast majority of all tax cuts since 1964, both in total dollars and in the steep drop in their marginal and effective rates. And they can afford it. Your share would be less than minimal.

From the Atlantic, on total costs for this:

Update—Friday Jan. 3, 4:31 PM: One more update to answer another good question I’ve received. Technically, you could say the additional cost of making college tuition free would be even cheaper than $62.6 billion. How come? Because most Pell Grant money is already spent at public colleges. In 2011 – 2012, state school students received $21.8 billion in grants. So, if you subtract that from the total needed to completely eliminate tuition, it the sum would be closer to $40 billion. (Apologies for not teasing that point out earlier. I’d noted it in a previous article and didn’t think to repeat it.)

I don’t denigrate others for their choices. I simply shouldn’t be forced to pay for their mistakes.

You’re assuming they did make mistakes, in this case. Why? How on earth would you know? And who are you to say their choice to major in this or that is a mistake? Or that their choice to go to X school instead of Y school is?

And you’re forgetting that others helped pay your way throughout your life. You went to public schools, right? Why should people who have no kids pay for your schooling? But they do. They did. They have for more than two centuries. That’s what sane societies do.

You travel on nothing but public roads and bridges all your life. You eat food inspected by the public sector. You use airports that wouldn’t exist without the public sector. You’re using an invention of the public sector right now, the Internet. Touch screen tech was invented by the public sector too. As was GPS and Satellite tech. Most every tech innovation in the last century came from the public sector, as do 75% of our new drugs.

No business in America could survive a day without public sector support, protection, R and D and bailouts. None could start up without it. Again, taxpayers have pitched in to try to make this society better going back more than 200 years. They’ve helped provide a foundation for you. Why should you suddenly be able to jump off the train and say you won’t help the next generation? Again, it’s not as if it’s a lot. Your tax contributions are a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the cost. It sounds like you think it’s your burden to carry the load for others all by yourself.

That’s obviously not the case.

Apparently our making good choices for the long term didn’t sit well with those people accustomed to following the carefree spending high expectations in fun keeping up with the Joneses. It is always about choices.

But all choices are made within a certain environment and environmental conditions, with certain natural boundaries, due to the luck of the draw. All choices are made on foundations that range from impoverished to obscenely wealthy. All choices are made within environments that help or hinder or just outright stop those choices from taken effect.

Some folks are born with wings, others with chains, and everything in between.

The problem is, as ZN mentions, when we think we achieve X because we make “the right choices,” while others “fail” because they made the wrong ones. It’s usually the case that they made really, really good choices too, but their environments, their birth lottery, put them so far back behind the eight ball, it didn’t matter.

Again, it’s cool to be proud of your choices. But why denigrate others for not fitting into your notions of “success”? Or for fitting into your notions of “failure”? Why assume everyone has an equal shot in this country, when that’s clearly not the case? Or that they didn’t make really good choices too?

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.

Another key here, IMO.

It’s one thing to celebrate your accomplishments. We all should do that. It’s still another to say we did this on our own, and the birth lottery had nothing to do with it; our parents had nothing to do with it; their parents and so on. That the environment we were born into was irrelevant.

It’s still another to say, well, I did it, so everyone can. And because I did it, that makes me incredibly virtuous, and everyone who “fails” to do what I did should be ashamed and doesn’t deserve any support at all. Because in America, anyone can do what I did, bucko!! It’s the golden land of opportunity, donncha know!

So the point- student loans and who pays them off- the borrower or the taxpayer, i.e., the rest of us- leaves a foul taste in my mouth. We played by the rules. And in my opinion, this explosion of student debt we see today can be laid squarely on uncapped, uncollateralized loans and the universities that exploit this by raising tuition accordingly. Market forces are taken out of the equation entirely. Cap those loans and see how fast tuition rates drop. What are they going to do? Close their doors?

Hey, Ozone, hope all is well.

Thing is, even if you played by the rules, you still benefited tremendously from massive investments by other taxpayers, past and present. You couldn’t have done what you did without trillions spent on infrastructure, libraries, museums, schools, etc. etc. and the whole intellectual legacy thing going back centuries. None of us does what we do in a vacuum, and I think Americans are too often barraged with false messages of our supposed exceptionalism and independence, hacking our way through the wilderness, alone, as we face lions, tigers and bears with our muskets and axes.

We’re literally all in this together, no matter how much we want to deny it.

So, it really comes down to where do you want to draw the line. Let’s say you don’t have any kids. You might want to say, “I don’t think I should have to pay for K-12 schools, teachers, books” etc. etc. We can find all kinds of similar situations where one’s personal circumstances make them ask “Why should I have to pay for X? I don’t use it!!” But that’s not how a society functions. And those same people would likely be pretty upset if others said the same and that led to the end of some good or service they wanted, etc.

Anyway, beyond that, two things: The main reason costs have skyrocketed for kids is the massive reduction in state support for tuition. It’s gone in most states from 80-100% to the low teens.

And, two, not everything in life should be subject to “market forces.” There should be realms where we escape from those demands. Like education, health care, energy, food, water, etc. Necessities and staples, at least, should be non-profit.

(Of course, I’d rather see the entire economy non-profit and fully democratized, but that’s another story).

Just my two cents.

Not necessarily useless degrees. Simply a degree from a school so expensive they couldn’t afford to repay the debt.

Right now, that’s most schools. Even state schools. Those of us from earlier generations had a much easier time of that, as mentioned. And we used to have free state colleges as recently as the 1970s — in New York and California. Massive tax cuts for the rich forced states to slash their support for higher ed, and here we are. Millennials now are guaranteed tens of thousands in debt when they leave school — again, even state colleges.

And you aren’t being asked to fund the expensive, private ones by anyone anyway. Sanders’ plan, for instance, only involves public universities and colleges. Clinton has moved in that direction as well.

No one is asking you to pay more taxes to support matriculating to Harvard, etc. etc.

Cartoon of a cartoon? Either you can afford the education or you can’t. Real world difficulties result from never understanding that simple concept.

Yes, cartoon of a cartoon. Your description of these mythical students who, unlike you, lack all connection to reality, have their heads permanently in the clouds, and selfishly choose “useless” degrees, because they don’t know what it means to be responsible for oneself — again, unlike you.

bnw wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

Government employees not in military service are private citizens. Same for contractors and subcontractors to the federal government. The numerous laws Hildabeast broke most certainly do apply to those private citizens. Comey ended his infamous speech by threatening other employees not to expect to get away with what Hildabeast did.

Its clear to me you do not know the first thing about this topic. You seem to be equating these employees with members of the press or the butcher shop owner or w’s infamous dry cleaner. Don’t.

We’ve been through this before. Yes, I know the topic, very, very well, and stop with the personal shots.

When I say “private citizens,” I’m not talking about government employees, at all. Any of them, in any capacity. I’m referring to workers outside the government, in the private sector. No one outside government would be subjected to what Clinton faced, if they had done the same, exact thing.

And Comey said she didn’t break any laws, in this case. He would have indicted her if she had.

If you want to discuss what she did in other realms, like wars, the surveillance state, economic imperialism and so on, that’s more than fine. Very few right-wingers will go there, because they tend to approve of the above, and they also likely know their own party is at least equally complicit.

The email server thing is nothing more than a faux-scandal, a tempest in a teacup, dredged up out of nothing to avoid the really tough investigations that would expose both parties.

No you don’t know the first thing about this. Those private citizens entrusted with government secrets are subject to the law. To argue that there is any equivalency with non government secrets is ridiculous. Truly ridiculous.

We can do this all day, if you want, bnw. Yes, I do know a great deal about this. Again, you have things backwards. “We” are not subject to anywhere close to the same strictures as Clinton or any other government official, when it comes to emails and private servers. And, again, you made it about “we versus she.” I’m just responding to that.

It’s a tempest in a teapot. And while you go on and on about that, you’ve completely ignored Trump’s con-game on taxes and trade, jobs and the economy overall, his serial lying, his racism and xenophobia, his strong support from white supremacists, his egging on his supporters to commit violence against protesters and so on.

Again, I can’t for the life of me see how anyone could support Trump. It’s just not defensible.

I worked my way through college. I chose a school which I could afford and majored in a degree program to get a job that could pay the bills. I could have gone elsewhere and spent much more money while miring myself in tremendous debt getting a degree that would never pay the bills. But I didn’t. No way in hell should I have to bail out those who did.

You wouldn’t be “bailing them out.” You would be helping, in a very limited way, invest in America’s present and future, as others have done for you your entire life. It would be a fraction of a fraction of “payback” for what you’ve already received, but not within light years of actually squaring that debt.

And you make it sound like you, all on your own, would be responsible for American education, which you find “unfair.” In reality, your personal input in taxes would be a tiny, tiny, tiny fraction of the whole — and again, wouldn’t come close to repaying what you’ve received in turn.

The average American, in their entire working life, won’t pay enough in taxes to cover even a mile of roadway. Yet we get to drive on endless miles, along with enjoying a huge array of other public goods and services. How selfish can a person get to not want to help pay for even a fraction of a fraction of that?

wv wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

I Getting “the church” to go along with this work-shaming was a major stroke of genius, of course, and much more effective than the original attempts at work-shaming.

—————
Yeah, the Major-Superstition, and the Education-indoctrination systems
work hand in hand. As well as the other corporotacracy-sub-systems.

…there’s a reason the anarchists and commies burned the churches
during the Spanish civil war. Turned out to be bad strategy though.
I think Cornell West knows that. He brings the anti-capitalist message along with a liberation-theology… Thats probly necessary given the religious-facts-on-the-ground…

I heard Obama on my car radio saying “there are no black Americans or white Americans..there’s only Americunz…”
I thot to myself, well he’s sellin that to white people. Cuz, thats
a hard sell to non-whites, given the history of racism…

w
v

WV, that’s a really concise way of putting it. Something I have trouble with meself.

;>)

Cornel West is one of a kind. I like the way he brings up the “Black Prophetic Tradition” and makes that work. He’s answering the right’s ugly exploitation of religion with his own, actually positive form. To be overly reductive for a moment: The right concentrates on the heavily authoritarian aspects of religious texts — which do dominate — while West and others like him concentrate on love and the empathic portions. I think he has the tougher job of it, because love can be much harder to sell than power, revenge and obedience. But, as you say, it may be one of the most effective ways to get the anti-capitalist message out there and make it stick.

And we need that more than ever.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.

I would guess most Americans view the “Protestant work ethic” as beyond reproach or criticism. That this is what “made America great.” I would also guess they find it entirely innocent as a concept. In reality, it’s all based upon very wealthy people, who themselves enjoyed tremendous amounts of leisure time — scolding and chiding the poor, small farmers, self-providers, artisans and the like who chose not to go to work for the capitalists in their factories. They chose, instead, to provide for themselves, with their own two hands, to control their own production, hours they worked, when and where and so on. Getting “the church” to go along with this work-shaming was a major stroke of genius, of course, and much more effective than the original attempts at work-shaming.

The rising capitalists also managed to get the state to help them move reluctant workers (formerly self-employed) into those factories by enclosing their lands, kicking them off them, passing laws that prevented certain kinds of hunting and fishing — extending ancient feudal prohibitions even more, etc. etc. These measures, along with the forced and violent unification of markets, and the destruction of local markets via the process of mass production itself, eventually did force the self-employed to work for others. They had no other choice. Their own ability to provide for themselves and their families had been destroyed.

The law being for we and not for she sealed the victory for Trump.

Well if you’re talking about the emails and the private server, we wouldn’t be in any kind of trouble at all. Private citizens wouldn’t be hauled before Congress for umpteen hours, the subject of GOP witch-hunts, or investigated by the FBI for what she did. If she had been a private citizen and had done the same exact thing, no one would care.

In the case of emails and private servers and such, government employees are actually held to much, much tougher rules and regs than we are. So, you have it backwards.

Now, if you’re talking about other things — her war record, her use of the State Department to bust up non-profit, public sectors (the Commons) overseas for our capitalists, her complicity with the expansion of the surveillance state and so on . . . that’s a different story. But the private email server? That’s a classic nothing burger.

Though it does point to a certain arrogance, a sense of entitlement, a tech stupidity and poor judgment that doesn’t speak well of her. But nothing she did would have been remotely subject to indictment or investigation if she had been a private citizen doing the same thing.

I can’t stand either candidate. And, frankly, I can’t for the life of me understand why you would want Trump to be the president. Neither Clinton nor Trump should be anywhere near the White House. Ever.

I’m just hoping that we don’t end up with a third party alternative that will draw enough votes away from Hillary to give The Donald the election a la Ralph “unsafe at any speed” Nader.

TSRF,

I agree with so much of what you say on the Huddle. And I greatly respect your passion. But I think you should research Nader’s impact on the election a bit further.

From my own research, it’s more than clear that he had nothing whatsoever to do with Bush winning. And our election process just doesn’t work that way, anyway. There is no decisive state. There can’t be. Because the electoral college works on a collective basis. Gore only won 20 states; Bush 30. The electoral college ended up being 271 to 266. Take any of the states Bush won and flip them, Gore wins. He can keep Florida and he (Bush) still loses.

Beyond that, Nader, based on exit polls in Florida, took away, perhaps, 24,000 potential Gore voters, but 308,000 Dems voted for Bush. If just 250 had switched their votes from Bush to Gore, Gore would have won Florida.

As in, if we play the counterfactual game, we can’t cherry pick. We would have to look at every state Gore lost, every state Bush won, and look for things that could have flipped the results. To me, blaming Nader is just all too convenient for Dem partisans — not saying you are one — because it takes their own voting patterns off the hook, their own poor campaigning, their own inability to close the deal.

Gore lost his own state of Tennessee. If he had won that state, he would have had enough electoral points to win the election. But, again, it’s the total accumulation. No one state can be decisive. So no third party run can be, either.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 4 months ago by Billy_T.