Forum Replies Created

Viewing 30 posts - 2,701 through 2,730 (of 4,288 total)
  • Author
    Posts
  • Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    I wonder if its possible to ‘go too far’ with the American public. I dunno.
    Its possible the Reps are lying too much now.

    Just depends how brain-damaged the public really is, due to lifetimes of
    corporate-propoganda.

    w
    v

    Good point. I think they may have. It’s actually kind of shocking to me that the narrative has changed so much on health care. It seems even Trump voters understand the GOP is trying to screw them. Bernie’s town hall in West Virginia recently was a good indication.

    Maybe they understand they can’t shop for the best “deal” on this, like they can, again, with an Iphone. It’s not, “Here’s my $700 dollars, now hand me that phone.” It’s “You received my $700 premium, please honor the agreement and pay $200K to the hospital for my heart bypass.”

    The so-called “free market” has absolutely nothing to do with any of this, nor can it. If corporations had Randian “freedom” to do as they pleased, they wouldn’t pay that claim. They’d do whatever they could to get out of paying it. They did, repeatedly, under the modest regulations prior to the (severely flawed) ACA, like yearly/lifetime caps, pre-existing conditions, typographical errors on patient claim documents, etc. etc. The ACA got rid of most of those, and insurance companies are still playing games with patients, because they have to if they want to even make overhead and turn a profit too.

    The private sector, for-profit model simply can’t work. It’s impossible for both the patient and the insurance company to get what they want at the same time.

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    A sidebar:

    I recently rewatched the Lonesome Dove series, and aside from enjoying it for its own sake, it made me think about another way to fix our health care system. America used to hire doctors and nurses via towns. Towns chipped in and paid their salaries. Patients didn’t pay doctors when they got sick. The entire town already had that covered.

    So, in addition to going Medicare for All, with zero privatization, we need to have free clinics, hospitals, GPs in every community, paid for by that community, with no fees when people utilize their services. All the basics should be covered. Perhaps have the Medicare for All kick in when “specialists” are needed, or longer term care. But every single American, with no exceptions, should be able to walk into a regular doctor’s office, a hospital (not just the Emergency Center), a clinic, and get prepaid care, via taxes, simply by being a citizen.

    That’s the humane way to do things. That’s the moral and ethical way to treat our fellow human beings.

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    That means the government paves the way for the private sector to cherry pick the best possible customers and the private sector STILL won’t or can’t cover everyone. Listening to wingnut reps and pundits and their Ayn Rand fantasies, one would think that prior to government picking up the slack for the indigent and the elderly, every American had amazing health care, cuz all the insurance companies were dying to cover the people who can’t afford to pay them, and the people who require the most care.

    Actually, the poor just died before programs like Medicaid, and the elderly just died before Medicare. Less than half of all seniors had insurance prior to the latter, for instance, cuz for-profit insurance companies lose huge amounts of money covering seniors.

    The only way out of this mess is to go full on Single Payer, Medicare for All. It’s the only possible way to lower premiums, reduce or eliminate deductibles, and cover everyone. Medicare currently operates with an overhead of just 1.8% for its own programs, and 6.8% when it administers the privatized parts. For-profit companies can’t come close to that. They’re typically in the 30% in overhead alone, not to mention profits. It’s beyond self-evident that we need to go Medicare for All without any privatization.

    Time for America to grow the fuck up and end its childish, dangerous, massively destructive fixation on the supposed glories of the “free market.” That ideology is literally killing us.

    in reply to: Robert Reich #66423
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    That said, I do think Sanders would have won. And the Dems, if they actually do want to win elections, need to radically alter their strategies going forward. Instead of this mindless idea that they should work to pick off “moderate” Republicans, while remaining centrist, as they dance with corporate America, etc. etc. . . . They need to turn leftward and concentrate on voters they’ve been ignoring for decades . . . and if those right of center don’t like it, tough shit. Instead of courting Republicans who might want to switch sides, they need to inspire folks on the left who haven’t picked any side yet. Push policies that appeal to lefties, on economics, inequality, war, empire, surveillance, civil liberties, etc. etc. and do so without hedging, apology or regret. Do so boldly, in a fiery manner, and talk about the “morality” of this vision as well.

    In any battle with the Republicans, they’re going to retain the vast majority of their core, regardless. But with this new push for actual left-wing governance, they’d expand their tent via the only fertile ground still available:

    To their left.

    The ground to their right is already locked down by the GOP.

    in reply to: Robert Reich #66422
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The other part of that equation is pretty obvious:

    If, as some say, the Dems in America lost because of the lack of a viable, “progressive” economic program — and they did lack this, of course — then why on earth would someone with a far worse economic vision win the day? Why on earth would someone running at the top of the GOP win the day, when that particular party’s economic orthodoxy is more stridently anti-labor, anti-worker, anti-environment and pro-corporate than the Dems?

    In order to support the notion that the Dems’ lack of concern for the poor, the working class, and the middle class led to Trump, the victor would have come from regions to the left of the Dems, not well to the right. He or she would have promoted at least Sanders-like policies, or better, and he or she wouldn’t have been a vulgar, lying billionaire, with a long record of screwing over workers.

    As much as all of us want the Dems to move waaaay left on economics, the fact that Clinton was center-right on the issue isn’t why she lost. She lost for a host of other reasons, chief among them her personal lack of charisma, her rather cold public persona, her inability to “connect” or inspire anyone outside a small circle and . . . . on the flip side, Trump’s ability to tap into ongoing fears and resentment in White America. Survey after survey shows us the key common denominator for his voters is the idea that non-whites are getting wildly preferential treatment in America, and whites are getting screwed.

    No other single factor looms as large for his voters, despite all the attempts to “white wash” this. It is what it is. Trump loudly, aggressively, at times viciously scapegoated people of color, citizen and feriners alike, and his supporters got off on it. He won because he became, for them, the real great white hope.

    in reply to: Hedges defines Fascism #66417
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Good interview with Hedges. And I was already a bit depressed before I watched it. Now? Sheesh.

    Thanks, WV.

    ;>)

    in reply to: Bernie and Sarah Silverman #66416
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Corporate media.

    Something still very striking about our news services. Even now, even with the acknowledgement that Trump is a liar, I still almost never hear the usual calls for “moderation,” “meeting in the middle,” “finding the center” that are perpetually lobbed at Democrats. The nagging news nannies of Versailles always, always do this when the Dems even hint at being even slightly left of center with their policies. But I’ve yet to hear any of those pundits call for moderation now.

    And they all seem to have gotten the memo to never talk about tax increases as a way to reduce deficits, much less balance the budget. Or, tax increases to pay for the programs likely under the axe this time. It’s always “Gotta deal with entitlements!”

    “That’s a good pet, newscaster! That’s a good boy!”

    in reply to: Robert Reich #66415
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    10. Many people asked, bewilderedly, “how did this [Trump] happen?” When I suggest it had a lot to do with the 35-year-long decline of incomes of the bottom 60 percent; the growing sense, ever since the Wall Street bailout, that the game is rigged; and the utter failure of both Republicans and Democrats to reverse these trends – they gave me blank stares.

    These things have happened, yes. Though Reich short-changes the length of time. It’s actually more like 44 years for wages. The most recent decline started roughly in 1973. But the “rigging” of the system goes back generations prior to that, and it comes out of the internal mechanics and logic of the capitalist system itself. Capitalism will always produce mass inequality and ecological destruction. It’s baked in.

    This really doesn’t explain Trump’s victory, IMO. If it did, why didn’t we see a Trump prior to this? Again, what Reich describes has been going on for generations. Why now?

    That said, the (center-right) Dems and center-left parties all over the world are certainly guilty of leaving an opening for the far right, mostly because they’ve been too afraid to offer up strong, at least “progressive” economic solutions. But there’s a lot more to this than just economics. Again, if there weren’t, this all would have happened decades ago.

    Beyond all of that, Reich’s “solution” is itself woefully inadequate. He wants to “save” capitalism, when it’s capitalism itself that has generated this mass inequality and ecological destruction, and always will. Reich and all too many “liberal” economists are talking about adding restraints to a system that perpetually shrugs them off, like a giant dog throws off lilliputian leashes. It’s too late for that.

    The patient needs far more than bandaids. It needs a full body transplant.

    in reply to: Bernie and Sarah Silverman #66403
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Bern talks about the difference tween ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ at about the nine minute mark. Sounds a lot like our ‘liberal’ vs ‘leftist’ discussions way back when.

    w
    v

    On that particular section. I think the “liberal” view is basically correct (but woefully incomplete) on matters of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. etc. Basically. But wildly wrong on matters of economics, empire, the surveillance state, etc. One could even think of “liberals” as “conservatives without the bigotry” from that angle. Which is why the typical American food fight between “liberals” and “conservatives” is basically so mindless — and fundamentally truncated. We don’t get the option of liberal on matters of race, gender and sexuality, and leftist on economics, empire, the surveillance state, etc. etc. We’ve never, ever had that option in our entire history. Which is tragic.

    I’m gonna start another thread later on the real underlying fault line, IMO. The thing we never talk about in America. Which is the battle between “individualism” and the “common good,” with both those things always already being wildly mischaracterized and misunderstood, thus preventing that discussion in the first place. As in, America basically has been forced into the “individualism” paradigm, while falsely believing there is some huge difference between “conservatives and liberals” on that issue.

    In reality, the differences are minor, and they’re really both on the same side of that debate, essentially, with no time given to those who see “the common good” as providing (ironically) the best possible foundation FOR “individualism,” etc.

    in reply to: Jacobin: Neoliberalism in New Zealand #66402
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    One of my favorite online publications. Consistently good. And the youth of its editors gives me a lot of hope for the future.

    It’s tragic that pretty much the entire world has “embraced” (by force) the capitalist cancer, with fewer and fewer protective filters. And I think the left makes a huge mistake when it, too, thinks that if we only go back to a time before “neoliberalism,” all will be well. In reality, “neoliberalism” is itself just a return, with added sophistication and new weaponry, to the neoclassical economics that dominated things prior to the Keynesian Era . . . . and that Keynesian Era was pretty much an aberration, a (roughly) thirty-year pause for the headlong march of capitalist destruction.

    Capitalism is capitalism is capitalism. It doesn’t matter what form it takes. It can’t be reformed, or contained, or work for more than the rich, and still BE capitalism. It can’t help but generate mass inequality and ecological destruction.

    Hope all is well, WV.

    in reply to: Besides Meals on Wheels… #66401
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    PA Ram,

    Agreed. Well said.

    Not sure if this is a good analogy, but I wonder if it doesn’t fit for some on the left:

    The GOP is judged by different standards, and more than a bit of this is subconscious. It’s as if all Republicans were drafted in the 7th round, or went undrafted, so expectations are a lot lower for them. When they do this crazy shit, even some on the left kinda shrug. But when Dems do their corporate two-step, when they govern from the center/center-right, some on the left appear far angrier with the Dems than they are with the (often hard-right) Republicans. It’s as if the Dems were drafted in the 1st, 2nd or 3rd round, so expectations are much higher, and the perception of “bust” is routinely palpable.

    In reality, the Dems are playing better “football” than the Republicans, but since they were “drafted” with much higher expectations, conscious or not, they piss people off a lot more.

    No excuse for the Dems’ cowardice, spinelessness, or endless desire to split the difference between the center and center-right. But, I think a truly objective look at the doings of both parties would likely yield a different response.

    Bottom line for me? It’s tragic we don’t have a strong leftist answer, one with an actual chance of governing — one that would govern solely on behalf of the entire country, not just the 1%, or the 0.1%. My own preference would be a complete end to the capitalist system, with zero remnants, as if it never had existed at all . . . and replace this with fully cooperative, democratic, egalitarian economics, decentralized, with zero concentrations of power or wealth. No employees. No employers. No masters, no slaves. All of us co-owners, working for the common good, together. But I’d be happy if we could even get to European Social Democracy here, even though that falls well short of where I really want us to be . . . .

    Hope all is well, PA.

    in reply to: A Trump-FBI Scandal Everyone Missed #66371
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    As is the case with most center-left media — and there isn’t much of it to begin with — Maddow is better when she’s dealing with a Republican White House. If a Dem is in office, she tends to cheerlead a bit too much. She and pretty much the entire MSNBC crew is basically unwatchable then.

    But she’s been very good when it comes to Trump. Along with a few other excellent print journalists, she’s been able to expose him for what he is: THE most corrupt, crooked, compromised, lying sack of shit president we’ve ever had.

    It’s not close.

    The thing that scares me the most is he’s likely going to get away with it, and his mass firings of the US attorneys (plus having Sessions in place) is a big reason why. While it’s true that every president cleans house like this, Trump is the first one to ever do it all at once and without warning. They were given less than half a day to clear out.

    Connecting the dots, this tells me it was planned in such a way to prevent them from saving the investigative actions they had been working on, passing it on others, keeping any semblance of institutional memory, etc. etc. there.

    It’s beyond surreal that Trump won, and it’s very clear he didn’t even think he would until the evening of election day. But now that he’s actually president, it’s becoming more and more apparent, with each passing day, that America elected a criminal, serial-lying goon, on a scale we’ve never seen. And America has seen its share.

    in reply to: White House calls cutting Meals on Wheels 'compassionate' #66370
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Mulvaney is a lying asshole, working for a lying asshole. I should stop doing this to myself, but when I turn on the tube and watch Trump, his team, or the GOP leaders feed us this endless stream of rationalized sadism, I just want to explode.

    Going on and on about not wanting poor people to have to pay for programs that benefit them? Programs they couldn’t possibly afford on their own, if they got to keep every single tax dollar they’ve ever paid into the Treasury?

    The Mulvaney’s of this world are flat out monsters. He, Trump, and the whole bloody crew of billionaires want nothing more than to slash their own taxes and prop up their own bank accounts. If they actually cared one iota for the poor, not only would they never, ever consider cuts, they’d actually increase spending for them by trillions, literally.

    Another thing that drives me crazy about these discussions in the media: It seems like the pundits have all been given the memo that they can’t talk about tax increases on rich people to pay for these things. It’s as if they’ve been told never, ever discuss such a thing. Instead, occasionally condemn the heartlessness of the most egregious cuts, but then say “We should cut entitlements instead.”

    No. You could pay for all of these programs and add trillions over time if you just returned tax rates on the rich to where they were from FDR through Kennedy. You could pay for all of them and come close to that with a return to rates from Johnson through Carter.

    It’s amazing that they get away with avoiding the revenue side so easily — and the poor and the working class die because they do.

    in reply to: NYT: Climate skeptics now run the EPA. #66007
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The inmates now run the asylum. It used to be we could laugh at morons like Inhofe, cuz they were relatively marginalized. Now, under the Trump administration, those crazy right-wing uncles are running the show. The guys who believe every far-right lie they read on Facebook — used to be from listservs or email forwards; now it’s Facebook — head the Executive, with Trump being the craziest uncle of them all.

    The only way out of this is for Trump to go down in flames, impeached, cuz the Chris Steele’s of this world are proven correct, and then for the American people to decide they’ve had enough of the Crazy Tree and want at least sane government again. At least that.

    in reply to: Defense spending chart #66005
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The number is actually much higher, if they include everything to do with actual military spending, regardless of department. It’s more than one trillion then.

    We could easily slash 75% of its budget and still spend too much. Shift that money to education, infrastructure, health care, the environment, etc. instead, and keep it in the public sphere. No privatization. All public. Americans would absolutely love the results, but they’ll never get that chance. The power of Capital will prevent us doing what is best for Americans.

    in reply to: Billionaire Politicians #66004
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Didn’t France have a cure for something like this a couple hundred years ago?

    They did in 1871. The Paris Commune. But, tragically, the French powers that be crushed it, violently.

    But I’m guessing you’re talking about the French Revolution. Didn’t go so well. Some great ideas behind it, like Liberté, égalité, fraternité. But it was hijacked, etc.

    Eugène Delacroix, 1830. Liberty Leading the People.

    in reply to: Billionaire Politicians #65998
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    One question I have yet to see be discussed is how a billionaire can ethically be a politician in the first place. ..

    ————–

    Yes, of course you are right. And of course its never discussed in the MSM — and if it WERE to be discussed you KNOW how they would ‘discuss’ it — they’d bring in a handful of billionaires and/or CEO’s and/or ‘think-tankers’ and/or other ‘safe’ guests to discuss it.

    Its over, Zooey. The scoreboard reads 99 to 1. Bernie being the one.
    There is no coming back from 99-1.
    I mean there has never been a time when there was MORE information about what was going on. Theres books, films, documentaries, the internet — its all full of accurate information and descriptions of the situation — and….its still…99 to 1. Information no longer matters. Game over. The dems and reps will trade chairs until the end.

    w
    v

    Yes, it’s over. I have to fight the urge to say that in almost every single thread on this board because it’s the bottom line of all of it – climate, banking, energy, voter suppression, you-name-it. It’s over.

    FWIW, I’m not sure it’s 99-1. I think Warren might be in there. I am skeptical of her for a reason I haven’t been able to put a finger on, but she fights a good fight, I think. I think Al Franken may be another. I don’t think either one of them is a grifter like Schumer, Pelosi, and…well…all of them, like you say. So it might be 97-3. Which looks better on paper. Sigh.

    Greed. It’s what is killing us.

    And in America, we have sanctioned greed as a virtue, a public good.

    Zooey, just a guess. But the Warren thing is pretty interesting. She wasn’t considered even “liberal” before she emerged as “tough on Wall Street.” And I think if we were in the 1940s — 1960s, she’d just be a mainstream Dem. Her economic stance was the norm back then. Kinda “soft Keynesianism.” Today, after forty-plus years of a return to neoclassical economics, in the guise of “neoliberalism,” she’s considered by some as way left of that.

    In short, it’s pretty sad that the furthest edge of the apparently acceptable “left” is barely center-left. And I don’t hear her talk much at all about unions, and virtually never about the poor, and definitely never, ever about alternatives to capitalism. While I see her as pretty honest, at least in relative terms, I don’t see her as a real champion of the working class. She’s more of a champion of a kinder, gentler, more orderly capitalism, which can’t help but favor ownership over workers.

    in reply to: Billionaire Politicians #65995
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Zooming out a bit, the left, as all the leftists here know, is very diverse. It’s far, far from the monolith as painted by so many on the right. Zooming in closer, some of us hold views on this or that particular issue that will fall to the left or right of the outer left, etc. etc.

    On this one, on the issue of billionaires actually existing in society? I’m guessing I’m well to the left of the majority of leftists here (and perhaps by myself), cuz I don’t think they should be allowed to exist, period. For a host of reasons. So, to me, it’s a given that what Zooey says is true. That they come with so much baggage, so many ties to corruption, they really have no business being “public” servants in the first place, but then I’d go much, much further. Cuz it’s not just those ties that are problematic, in my view.

    Anyone who accrues millions or billions — outside inheritance — is already “corrupt” from a moral and ethical point of view. They can’t help but be just that. Because they can’t possibly accrue that much money unto themselves without screwing over their workforce, big time. It’s mathematically impossible. It’s simply not possible for ownership to come close to paying workers in accord with their levels of production and end up with large amounts of money for themselves (ownership). It’s. Literally. Freaking. Impossible.

    And this also applies to the way most new billionaires make their fortunes today: IPOs. It still comes down to never, ever paying a workforce even a fraction as much as their production warrants. And none of that even begins to touch upon additional areas of the forgotten, like public works, schools, libraries, common intellectual inheritance, slavery, war, imperialism, etc. etc.

    In an ideal world, we’d have zero economic/power pyramids. But even under our current system, the rich should not be in power, or in control of the strings. They’ve already proven themselves unfit.

    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    His infrastructure program sounds like classic propertarian (right-libertarian) udopia stuff.

    A trillion dollars handed to private contractors and/or money guys, and much of the infrastructure remaining in private hands after it’s all said and done. If it goes according to the Ayn Rand plan, we’re talking major tolls all across the country. As in, a big fat scam.

    We desperately need upgrades. But it needs to be public, all public. From what I’ve read, that’s not the GOP/Trump plan at all.

    in reply to: Missed yall, missed the internet #65710
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    As for the squirrels. Um, well, you know. The Internet is full of nuts.

    ;>)

    Too easy?

    in reply to: Missed yall, missed the internet #65709
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Well, i dont understand any of that tech-talk BT — all i know is this thing is lightning fast. I’ve never had anything like this. Its faster than a Rams three-and-out. Its faster than a blitzing LB rocketing through the Rams OLine…

    I have a friend who said she has trouble with comcast internet when it Rains. So i asked the hookup guy about that and he said its probly SQUIRRELS.

    Squirrels are attacking the Internet, apparently.

    One wonders what they WANT. Why the internet?

    w
    v

    Rain hasn’t been a problem for me. It’s been pretty solid. Did they give you a special speed? I’ve got 25 megs, but have had the 100 megs on special now and then. Am guessing they’ve increased that by now.

    As for the Norton product. If you don’t feel comfortable setting that up, I think it’s worth the call into tech support for the help with the download. You should set up a website account with them and try this page for the download. Maybe get customer care to walk you through it. It’s important to have the firewall plus antivirus program — and it’s free, etc.

    https://constantguard.xfinity.com/products-and-services/norton-security-suite/

    Here’s a link to Best Buy’s cable modems.

    Best Buy cable modems for Xfinity

    in reply to: Some interesting Russian stuff #65696
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    It appears Trump helped Russian oligarchs launder their ill-gotten billions, though he’s no doubt far from being alone in this. But the key for us (IMO) is that America elected perhaps its first Russian mob boss — in effect. And, of course, yeah, politicians being crooks is nothing new. But I don’t think we’ve ever seen anything on this scale before, and never in our history have we had a president so brazenly reward billionaires with “official” power.

    (It’s also important to remember that Trump at least two nominees who have both since dropped out, due to publicized conflicts of interests. The secretaries of the Army and Navy, both obscenely wealthy)

    The Clinton Foundation and HRC’s email scandal were pretty much enough to sink her chances among enough people who might have voted for the Dems otherwise. It seems beyond question that her scandals were minuscule in comparison with Trump’s. He’s just in a entirely different league of crookedness. It’s really not close.

    Anyone who voted “on principle” for Trump because of Clinton’s alleged crookedness made a rather strange choice, to be all too generous about it.

    in reply to: Some interesting Russian stuff #65695
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    There are 3 Rachel Maddow segments I wanted to post, and the site embeds their videos and has an automatic playlist, so I can’t necessarily post the videos I want…they all have the same link. (EDIT: I emailed the links as the video played and got specific hyperlinks which I have pasted here).

    But in case it doesn’t work, I will put the page here, and direct your attention to these three videos:

    Wilbur Ross at Nexus of Trump Russian Deal
    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/new-commerce-secretary-at-nexus-of-lucrative-trump-russian-deal-886220355575

    White House Denials Raise New Questions
    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/white-house-denials-raise-new-questions-886225987806

    Trump Mysteries Less Odd from Russia Vantage
    http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow/watch/trump-choices-like-manafort-not-so-odd-from-russian-perspective-886238787711

    The web page is http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show

    This Russia connection looks so bad on the surface that I don’t know what to say. I can only guess that this is the New World Order if billionaires are going to be in charge because they can’t be that rich without having international soil all over their hands. But, man, this makes Putin look like the godfather of the planet right now.

    I watched her story on the Russian ties as well. She gets a lot from the New Yorker piece, as you know:

    Trump, Putin, and the New Cold War What lay behind Russia’s interference in the 2016 election—and what lies ahead? — By Evan Osnos, David Remnick, and Joshua Yaffa

    in reply to: Missed yall, missed the internet #65694
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Anyway, i am online, kinda, barely (thru frontier) but I’m switching to Xfinity Comcast tomorrow. They are coming out and they ‘say’ I’ll have faster improved speed, blah blah blah. We’ll see. I may be offline again after they come, i dunno.

    w
    v

    WV,

    You probably already know this, via your switch to the Cable Modem, but just in case (I’ve had Comcast for more than a decade now, and did tech support on Cable Modems long before that):

    1. You should buy your own, instead of renting theirs. It will pay for itself in less than a year, and then each year after that, you’re saving money.

    2. Take advantage of their free antivirus software. I get Norton through them, and if you previously paid for it, that’s a nice savings each year too.

    3. Make sure you have a good router, with the latest consumer protocol (802.11ac) and set it up with WPA2-PSK(AES). If it uses the private IP address in the 192 series, switch it to 10.0.0.1 instead. Though the 192 series still works fine.

    4. Each year, you’re probably gonna get a big increase in price from Comcast. Just call in and negotiate it back down. I’ve done this successfully, with only a coupla failures, for more than a decade. It costs them more to lose you as a customer than to keep you, even at the same rate as last year or better.

    Hope all is well —

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65540
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    It goes without saying, but the above (economic critique) is directed at public figures, not any posters. Mostly talking about Republicans in Congress and/or the White House when that happens . . . along with right-wing pundits, etc.

    No penalty, no foul, dude.

    Thanks, Ozone. Appreciate that.

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65539
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    No, Billy, I don’t think I am. I mean, the tweet was Trumpian. Haha!

    It’s pretty basic in any economy…the higher the risk, the higher the interest rate. I mean, look at the payday loans (which should be abolished, IMO)…Houses and cars are collateral. So if you don’t pay it back, which is immoral under most circumstances, you lose the house or the car.

    Another factor…parental income is always part of the equation. Up to age 24. That’s part of the FAFSA application process. I think you know that there are public and private student loans. And correct me if I’m wrong, but those secured by the Feds can’t be discharged through bankruptcy.

    This may surprise you, but I’m all for increasing taxes on the rich (a million and up on income unless it’s a small-medium family biz. They can easily handle it. I’m also for slashing taxes on the middle class if not anything more than spending power. Singles too. I started filing single last year and I got hammered pretty good. I’m not a guy that needs or wants a lot, but still…I’d contribute more to the economy if my tax rate was a bit less…what is it, 40% of the country is single? The downside is I’d be addicted to Amazon Prime.

    Correct about the loans and bankruptcy. I paid off three different sets of them, in three separate decades. :>)

    Worked with a kid (a few years ago) whose girlfriend was in major dire straits with her student loans, and she just couldn’t get out from under it, so I suggested bankruptcy. That’s when I found out the youngins can’t go that route, with their 1.3 trillion in student debt.

    Yet another reason why Sanders’ proposal of tuition-free college is so important and essential now.

    Also agree with you about cuts to middle class taxes and below, while raising it big time on the wealthy. I’d also like to end all business taxes and shift it to personal income. It’s an unfair burden on small businesses which can’t afford to hire tax cheats, I mean tax attorneys like the big corporations. So why not just end the charade and put it all on individual income taxes?

    The key would be to increase the brackets. Have several above the current ceiling of 400K. Like 750K, 1 mil, 10 mil, 25 mil, 50 mil, 100 mil, 250 mil, 500 mil and 1 billion. Something like that. Progressively higher rates all the way up the ladder.

    Top rate should be 99.8%. And if anyone replies that, “Well, they won’t try to make that kind of money if it’s all taxed.” And I’d respond, great. It’s actually terrible for the economy to have money so concentrated at the top anyway. No one spends less as a percentage of their income than the rich, which means, in essence, they take money out of the economy and kill “velocity.”

    Flip side of that being, the most effective and efficient creators of velocity in capitalism are working class blokes. They spend everything here and now.

    That’s where the money should be. From the bottom up into the middle, with very, very little at the upper end.

    Flatten the pyramid to the extent possible and the economy will soar.

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65522
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    It goes without saying, but the above (economic critique) is directed at public figures, not any posters. Mostly talking about Republicans in Congress and/or the White House when that happens . . . along with right-wing pundits, etc.

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65521
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    This is all I needed to know about Bernie.

    “It makes no sense that students and their parents pay higher interest rates for college than they pay for car loans or housing mortgages.”

    — Sanders, post on Twitter, Oct. 15, 2015

    Clueless. Does he know the correlation between risk and lending in banking?

    Ozone,

    Remember, those student loans are secured by the Federal government, so they hold less risk than car and home loans. But even if we set that aside, I’m sure Sanders knows the way the competitive laws of motion work in capitalist economics, and that risk is a major factor, as is the need for a tangible, recoverable asset. He knows this.

    He was objecting to the immorality of this. He was talking in terms of social justice, not strict Econ101. As in, it shouldn’t be the case that something as vital for kids as a college education generates a higher loan percentage than a car or a home. Education shouldn’t be a commodity, or reified, etc.

    Also, I know conservative media had a field day after his tweet, but no one should ever pay one second’s attention to right-wingers on economics to begin with. They actually believe slashing taxes for rich people “creates jobs” and brings in more revenue to the Treasury. Talk about economic illiteracy. And then to make it even worse, they call for slashing spending in the middle of a recession or depression.

    If right-wingers were ever allowed to implement their full economic agenda, without restraints, the capitalist system would collapse and we’d have blood in the streets. Now, as mentioned, I definitely want capitalism to die, but I don’t want it to die that way, with all of that suffering. We need to peacefully vote it out of existence instead.

    In short, Ozone, I think you’re misreading Bernie’s tweet.

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65510
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    Ozone,

    Also, just to be clear, you said:

    FDR never wanted to replace capitalism. He wanted social justice. Then ironically, he locked up Japanese Americans.

    I know he didn’t. That’s kinda my point. FDR was never, ever “far left.” He tried to find a middle ground between actual leftists and the establishment. He even said his mission was to save capitalism from itself.

    Me? I don’t see the point. I honestly think that any objective look at it, one that can get outside and above all the brainwashing we’ve endured for decades and decades, tells us we need to dump it. It’s evil, IMO. And it’s never, ever actually worked for more than a fraction of the world. It’s also simply unsustainable from an ecological point of view (Grow or Die).

    In short, I’m well to Bernie’s left on most issues, but I think in relative terms, he was the best “viable” candidate, and it wasn’t close.

    in reply to: is everyone just shellshocked? #65509
    Avatar photoBilly_T
    Participant

    The other meaning of small “c” communism . . . comes from writers like David Graeber. I agree with him and others when they say we humans are natural small “c” communists. This particular meaning isn’t “political.” It’s social. As in, we naturally, even under the thumb of capitalism, share within families, neighborhoods, even on the job, while seeking no remuneration. We share our food, our homes, our time, our knowledge and skills, cooperatively, and we’re hard-wired to do this for a complex of reasons . . . . one of the most obvious being it really makes us feel good.

    The vast majority of us are not set up to be Caesars or Napoleons. Instead, we want to get along, be merry, eat, drink, make love not war. We want to share our lives with others and live in peace to the degree possible. For the vast majority, if there’s no issue of “scarcity,” we just don’t feel the need to confront others “competitively,” or violently, etc. Unless we’re confronted — or ordered to, etc.

    IMO, modern society has long been crafted by the Caesars and Napoleons to their benefit, not ours, and it fits them, not us. It’s long past time we take it away from them and establish society in our own image, not in the image of the alphas and sociopaths — the few, not the many, etc.

Viewing 30 posts - 2,701 through 2,730 (of 4,288 total)