Liberal Democrat

Liberal Democrat
Individual Freedom For Everyone

Sunday, March 31, 2013

NFL Films: The Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl Highlights

Source:NFL Films- Kansas City Chiefs WR Otis Taylor catching a 42 yard TD pass from QB Len Dawson.

Source:The Daily Journal

“Yesterday Kansas City beat Green Bay, ending the Packer’s 19-game winning streak. This video shows another notable Packers vs. Chiefs game along with the Chiefs other Super Bowl appearance.”

From Gwllyamz

This is going to sound simplistic, but it is so true and important that I have to say it anyway: The difference between the 1966 Kansas City Chiefs and the 1969 Kansas City Chiefs, is that the 69 Chiefs won the Super Bowl.

And why do I say that? Because the 69 Chiefs knew what it was like to lose a Super Bowl on national TV and most of the players on the 66 team were also on the 69 team.

The 69 Chiefs knew that just getting to the Super Bowl was not enough. Or just getting to the Super Bowl and playing a good first half was not enough. That if you didn’t actually win the game, you failed and didn’t accomplish your ultimate goal which was to win the Super Bowl.

There is no second place in the Super Bowl. You either win it or you lose it and that was one of the motivators that served the 69 Chiefs very well in Super Bowl 4.

Wednesday, March 27, 2013

Think Progress: Michael Waldron: ‘More Proof That America Doesn’t Have A Spending Problem’

Source:Think Progress- with a look at the United States Federal budget.

“The idea that the United States has an out of control spending problem has gripped Washington D.C. for most of the economic recovery, and nowhere is that more evident than in recent budget negotiations, where the conversation has been almost solely about when budgets will balance and by how much they will reduce the debt. […]/p…


Leave it up to Think Progress to only report half of the story, which is why I only use them to gage what so-called Progressives (who aren’t very progressive) are thinking in America.

Michael Waldron only covered the discretionary side of the Federal budget. For anyone who that might sound like Greek who doesn’t speak Greek: the discretionary side of the Federal budget is non-national security and so-called entitlement spending. Things like infrastructure, research, education funding, and so-forth. Which is about half of the Federal budget. (Give or take)

According to Michael Waldron of Think Progress, the Federal budget has fallen over the last two years, which is true thanks to the Budget Control Act of 2011. But he didn’t take into account or report how much the Federal budget has grown overall since 2001.

When President Obama took office in 2009, the Federal budget represented around 22% of the American economy. Thats if you don’t include Afghanistan and Iraq, its much higher than that if you do. But the Bush Administration never bothered to put those wars on budget or pay for them.

What the Obama Administration along with their efforts to respond to the Great Recession with the American Recovery Act of 2009-10, they also put the wars on budget and the Affordable Care Act of 2010 on budget which was paid for. So I would argue that they were correct to increase the Federal budget over that period to deal with the economy and healthcare. And we’ve seen the benefits of both but Federal spending under President Obama went up in his first two years.

This is according to the Congressional Budget Office, when President Clinton left office in 2001: the Federal budget represented around twenty percent of the American economy. Under President Bush, we grew to twenty two percent thanks to Medicare Advantage, No Child Left Behind, Hurricane Katrina. But again if you include Afghanistan and Iraq it’s higher the 22%.

The last two years, the Federal budget has come down by roughly ten percent thanks to the Budget Control Act, but we are still at a higher level than we were in 2001, when the economy was still in good shape with more people working. 

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Tuesday, March 26, 2013

The Daily Beast: Representative Michele Bachmann's Most Outrageous Comments


Source:The Daily Beast- former U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (Republican, Minnesota) The only public service that Michele Bachmann ever did was not running for reelection. She did Minnesota a big favor there.

Source:FreeState MD

“Never one to shy away from a tendentious (or just blatantly false) statement, the Tea Party Congresswoman has witnessed her fair share of controversy. From virulent anti-gay sentiment to borderline McCarthyism, watch Bachmann’s worst.”


Some people may think George W. Bush is the Democratic Party’s favorite punching bag. But the fact is President Bush has been out of office for over four years now (thank God) and he’s looking pretty good compared with today’s GOP.

This is a little difficult for me because that’s like coming up with best plays that Larry Bird ever made playing basketball. Or the best passes that Joe Montana ever thrown, or the best home runs that Hank Aron ever hit and so-fourth. Also I don’t live in Representative Bachmann’s House district or state, thank God, otherwise I would’ve moved or been kicked out of there, whatever came first. And I’m not in Congress myself so what I hear about her is from the national media or from blogs. But I can limit it two or three as someone who follows politics closely and has big annoyance when it comes to political hypocrisy and contradiction.

When Representative Bachmann announced for President in the summer of 2011, as I and every other blogger and comedian were celebrating about all the new material that was going to come our way free of charge and at her expense coming from Michele herself, she announced she was in favor of two constitutional amendments. One was to outlaw pornography and the other was to outlaw same- sex marriage both at the federal level. Keep in mind this coming from someone who calls herself a constitutional conservative. Also keep in mind this coming from someone who knows as much about conservatism and the U.S. Constitution as a fish knows about Wall Street.

During Representative Bachmann’s four month presidential campaign she also came out against big government. Well, that makes sense because that’s an issue she knows a lot of about with all of her positions in support of big government. Michele has a habit of bashing things she’s in love with, well, take big government to use as an example. And claiming to love and support things that she says she loves. Take well the U.S. Constitution to use as an example.

What if I were a Republican today, first of all I would ask myself why am I a Republican today and if I could answer that question and I was still a Republican, I would want George W. Bush back leading the party. And prey that he learned something from all of his dumb mistakes as President and didn’t repeat them. Because GWB looks like a God compared with today’s Republican Party and Michele Bachmann represents the intelligence and information gap in the Republican Party. And why they can’t win elections they are supposed to win easily going in.

MSNBC: ‘U.S. Senator Jon Tester Backs Marriage Equality’

Source:NBC News- U.S. Senator Jon Tester (Democrat, Montana)
“The march towards marriage equality among Democrats is quickly becoming a stampede. Sen. Jon Tester (D) of Montana posted this message to his Facebook page this.

The march towards marriage equality among Democrats is quickly becoming a stampede. Sen. Jon Tester (D) of Montana posted this message to his Facebook page this afternoon:

“Montanans believe in the right to make a good life for their families. How they define a family should be their business and their business alone. I’m proud to support marriage equality because no one should be able to tell a Montanan or any American who they can love and who they can marry.”

There are 55 members of the Senate Democratic caucus, and according to Time magazine’s count, 45 of them have now publicly announced their support for marriage equality. That’s obviously short of 100%, but given the recent push, unanimity appears inevitable.

It’s worth noting that Tester is a “red”-state Democrat who was narrowly re-elected last year, as was Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), who also endorsed marriage equality the other day. Some other recent announcements have come from “red”-state Democrats — Virginia’s Mark Warner and Alaska’s Mark Begich — who announced their support for same-sex marriage before their re-election fights in 2014.”

From MSNBC

This is not actually that surprising, if you are familiar with the State of Montana. Montana gets stereotyped (especially by left-wing Democrats) as a hillbilly, backwards, right-wing, redneck state. And sure, there are folks like that in the State of Montana. But in actuality, Montana matches up very well with the other Mountain West and Northwest states in the country, as a more center-right, conservative-libertarian state. Where Democrats (if they’re not left-wing) get elected statewide there on a fairly regular basis. Just not at the presidential level. 

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Friday, March 22, 2013

The American Prospect: Christopher Ketcham: 'U.S. Out of Vermont'

Source:The American Prospect- Is there such a thing as Federalists, in the Socialist Republic of Vermont:

“Last September, about 60 Vermonters met in the chambers of the house of representatives in Montpelier to celebrate the state’s “independence spirit” and to discuss the goals of “environmental sustainability, economic justice, and Vermont self–determination.” The speaker of the house had given up the space free of charge for the one-day conference. First at the podium was a Princeton-educated yak farmer and professor of journalism named Rob Williams, one of the organizers of the event, who at 9 A.M. opened the proceedings by acknowledging what he called “some unpleasant and hard truths.” Amid the twin global crises of peak oil and climate change, the United States was “an out-of-control empire.” It was “unresponsive to the needs, concerns, and desires of ordinary citizens.”

Williams, who wore a T-shirt that said “U.S. Out of Vermont,” did not advocate revolution. He was looking for a divorce. He wanted Vermont to secede. “Nonviolent secession,” he said, “the detaching from empire and exercising our rights to independence, a deeply American right first expressed in the Declaration of Independence, is a right that demands re-exploration today.” Williams noted that Vermont is one of only three states, along with Texas and Hawaii, that ever existed as an independent republic-in Vermont’s case, from 1777 to 1791-and that as “a national leader on progressive political issues,” the state was “uniquely poised to lead this national conversation on self-determination.”

The murmuring response from the crowd suggested they’d heard it before. Williams and his fellow travelers-who constituted not quite a movement, he said, but more “a network of critical observers”-had been calling for separation from the U.S. since 2003. They had gathered in the ornate rooms of the state house to spread the word in 2005 and again in 2008 and now in 2012. Vermont had not yet separated, but the secessionists who were calling for a “Second Vermont Republic” had gained notoriety, and some small influence, across the state.”

Source:The American Prospect

What I respect about Vermont is that even though they are basically the Socialist Republic or State of Vermont (and I’m not as far to the left of them on economic policy, but I probably tend to agree with Vermonters on social issues) is that they represent socialism in it’s best form. A democratic form in the sense that they aren’t trying to run people’s personal lives. And they believe in a good deal of personal freedom, even economic freedom. That is they aren’t trying to takeover industries with the state and have the state run them, but that they believe in a generous welfare state or safety net. Combined with economic and personal freedom. But the perhaps the thing I respect about them the most is that they are Federalists in a leftist sense: “We like socialism, but we don’t want it coming from the Federal Government. We can govern ourselves.”

Vermont is the roadmap for national leftist democrats in other states in their quest (or fantasy) to transform America into a social democracy, a socialist-federalist roadmap. Which means:

a high deal of personal freedom as long as you aren’t hurting innocent people with what you are doing.

A high deal of economic freedom with things like property rights, you just have to pay high taxes on them to finance a generous welfare state. But that the State of Vermont would be doing these things for Vermonters, not Uncle Sam with its top-down, Washington knows best approach. And they also aren’t going to try to force Vermonters to live a certain way even for their own good. And give Vermonters the ability to make decisions and take risks with their own lives.

Social Democrats in America having been trying to transform America into a social democracy at least since the New Deal era. Thinking that centralize planning and control at the Federal level works in these European countries that means it will automatically work here as well. And that Americans will accept it even if they didn’t vote for it. What they don’t understand is that America is simply a hell of a lot bigger and more decentralize and more individualistic. And that top-down tends to not very popular, but gradually moving state by state like in Vermont, could accomplish what leftist democrats have been wanting all along, which is basically a social democracy in America. 

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Thursday, March 21, 2013

The Nation: Rick Perlstein: ‘Why a Democratic Majority Is Not Demographic Inevitability’

Source:The Nation- "Protestors rally against SB1070 immigration bill in Arizona in 2010. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin.)" Also from The Nation Magazine.

“In February, I wrote the first part in a promised series about why today’s political conventional wisdom—that, as Jonathan Chait put it “conservative America will soon come to be dominated, in a semi-permanent fashion, by an ascendant Democratic coalition hostile to its outlook and interests”—may be premature. I cleared the decks by pointing to all those other moments—in 1964, 1972, 1974 (and, I didn’t note, 1992)—when equally confident prognostications of permanent Democratic majorities came a cropper. This time, I take on the most conspicuous this-time-it’s-going-to-be different argument: that the white vote in presidential elections has gone from almost 90 percent in 1980 to about 70 percent in 2012; that there are 24 million Hispanics currently eligible to vote and there will be 40 million by 2030; and that only 27 percent of Hispanic voters chose Mitt Romney for president (chart here)—and so, abracadabra, Democrats Ãœber Alles!

Now, it might hard for us to wrap our minds around a different way of seeing things in these days of Joe Arpaeio and Jan Brewer—and Susana Martinez, the Latina governor of New Mexico who promises to repeal her state’s law allowing undocumented immigrants to get driver’s licenses even though her own grandparents were undocumented immigrants. But, taking the long view—and isn’t that the whole point of this exercise?—it has to be acknowledged: party identities aren’t passed on through the genes. Blocs of “natural Democrats” have become natural Republicans before. Indeed, in at least one instance, it happened with shocking rapidity. As I noted last time, in the 1960s, droves of white Democrat ethnics—Italians, Eastern Europeans, the Irish—started voting Republican in a backlash against the Democrats’ continued embrace of civil rights in the wake of a failed open housing bill and the urban riots. Only an eye-blink earlier, they had been considered the soul of the New Deal coalition.”

Source:The Nation

The worst mistake that you can make in American politics is to assume that anything is permanent especially when you are ahead. Or to relax when you are ahead and not look to continue to improve and think you’ve reached the mountaintop and will never  be knocked off. The second biggest mistake is to assume your opponents are dead when they are down and you’ll be in power forever. And I have some examples of that.

In 1964 the Republican Party led by Barry Goldwater failed to even get 40% of the popular vote for President which is a hard thing to do in a two-man Presidential race. And Democrats added to their landslide majorities in Congress (House and Senate) leaving Congressional Republicans with around 145 seats in the House and thirty-two in the Senate. Congressional Republicans bounced back by 1966 and won back a lot of seats in both the House and Senate and thanks to Richard Nixon won back the White House in 1968.

The smart political play when you are up is to continue to drive forward and climb the hill even if you are already at the top. You find a bigger hill or mountain try to climb up that as well by building your own party. Understand why you have the power that you currently have and the new voters you picked up and why you are out-of-power in places where you can win back.

And I’m thinking of the U.S. House of Representatives where Republicans are still in charge there and at the state level where Republicans currently hold 30-50 Governorships and a solid majority of both legislatures and legislative members even in places like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. All Democratic states and in swing states like Florida and Virginia that both voted to reelect President Obama.

We now live in a liberal democratic country at least as far as social issues are concern. With a solid majority of Americans who believe in a good deal of personal freedom with government not interfering in our personal lives. Gay marriage and marijuana are perfect examples of that and something Liberal

Democrats need to capitalize on the support for more personal freedom in America, but a social liberal message alone won’t be enough to win back the U.S. House and states like Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin ,all states where Democrats should do well there especially with our new voters.

Democrats are going to need a center-left, progressive economic message as well that’s about opportunity, freedom and responsibility and expanding those things to Americans who currently don’t have them for the Democratic Party to do as well as it can and should.

I’m happy that President Obama was reelected and reelected in an electoral landslide and that Senate Democrats not only held their majority, but added to it. But we still have plenty of work to do like taking back the U.S. House and giving the Democrats complete control of Congress again and winning back some state houses and legislatures so there aren’t as many Republican looking House districts in Democratic leaning states. Time to be happy, but never be completely satisfied. 

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Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Salon Magazine: David Sirota: 'How to Turn a State Liberal'

Source:Salon Magazine- Colorado Governor David Hickenlooper.

“As Colorado goes, so goes the nation. With the culture and demographics of the Intermountain West so rapidly changing, this motto about my home state has become conventional wisdom in national electoral politics, and for good reason. After all, the square state is the capital of the so-called Rocky Mountain Empire, a region that is fast becoming the political equivalent of a test market for the whole country. And if it is true that the way Colorado goes is the way the nation as a whole goes, then America better get ready for some extremely large changes.

Part of Colorado’s story of change comes from the statehouse where Democrats control both the governor’s office and both chambers of the Legislature. But as much of the story comes from outside the Capitol, where organic grass-roots uprisings are obliterating old political assumptions.

For decades, this was a state whose electoral topography was reliable Republican and whose politics was dominated by an unholy coalition of cultural conservatives and oil and gas interests. In the 1980s and 1990s, it became the national conservative movement in a microcosmic petri dish, passing socially conservative constitutional amendments and a so-called Taxpayer Bill of Rights aimed at pulverizing the public sector.”


I have this wild notion that David Sirota’s notion of what liberal and liberalism are, is a lot different than what mine are. Perhaps that’s because he writes for Salon Magazine, which is made of up New-Left columnists, people who are closeted Socialists, but in some cases are self-described Democratic Socialists. So maybe what I should talk about here is how to turn a state Democratic, especially Center-Left Democratic and make it more progressive, not socialist.

It’s changing demographics, not just ethnically and racially, but culturally and regionally, that’s reshaping the Democratic and Republican parties in America. The country, especially the West like Colorado, is becoming more urban and suburban. While you have a Republican Party that’s becoming more rural, Anglo-Saxon, more Protestant, especially fundamentalist Protestant, older, more male, more blue-collar.

While the Democratic Party has been reaching out to Latino-Americans since the 1990s, at least, you have a Republican Party with a strong faction in it calling those Americans Un-American and invaders. So we’re seeing more Latinos move to the Democratic Party, from the Republican Party, because they feel more welcome in the Democratic Party.

I’m not sure the country is changing so much ideologically, even though we’re seeing a higher percentage of Americans support more personal freedom as it relates to same-sex-marriage, marijuana, gambling, the right to privacy in general, as well as free speech.

I think the real changes have to do with racial, ethnic, and regional demographics, with one party meaning the Democratic Party embracing the New America, while the Republican Party is still trying to take us back to the 1950s culturally, racially, and ethnically.

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Tuesday, March 19, 2013

AlterNet: Chris Hedges: 'Gulag Nation USA'

Source:AlterNet- columnist Chris Hedges.

"If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states. Once you disappear behind prison walls you become prey. Rape. Torture. Beatings. Prolonged isolation. Sensory deprivation. Racial profiling. Chain gangs. Forced labor. Rancid food. Children imprisoned as adults. Prisoners forced to take medications to induce lethargy. Inadequate heating and ventilation. Poor health care. Draconian sentences for nonviolent crimes. Endemic violence.

Bonnie Kerness and Ojore Lutalo, both of whom I met in Newark, N.J., a few days ago at the office of American Friends Service Committee Prison Watch, have fought longer and harder than perhaps any others in the country against the expanding abuse of prisoners, especially the use of solitary confinement. Lutalo, once a member of the Black Liberation Army, an offshoot of the Black Panthers, first wrote Kerness in 1986 while he was a prisoner at Trenton State Prison, now called New Jersey State Prison. He described to her the bleak and degrading world of solitary confinement, the world of the prisoners like him held in the so-called management control unit, which he called “a prison within a prison.” Before being released in 2009, Lutalo was in the management control unit for 22 of the 28 years he served for the second of two convictions—the first for a bank robbery and the second for a gun battle with a drug dealer. He kept his sanity, he told me, by following a strict regime of exercising in his tiny cell, writing, meditating and tearing up newspapers to make collages that portrayed his prison conditions."

From the AlterNet 

Prisons are for to protect the innocent from people who've hurt them and would do it again, intentionally or unintentionally. The original punishment for being in prison is the lost of freedom and going through strict security requirements, like keeping weapons out of the prison. But prisons aren't supposed to be torture chambers especially in a liberal democracy and even for people who are serving life in prison. But there to keep criminals behind bars until they've paid their debt and society, as well as showing they can be successful legally once they are out of prison. Prisons should be a productive place for the staff, the inmates where they can benefit from their time behind bars, that benefits society, as well but prisons most importantly should benefit the people who pay for them.

So a productive prison system would be  a system where people enter as criminals but leave as people with the skills to succeed successfully on the outside. And now have given up their criminal careers because they simply no longer need to be criminals in order to survive and no longer want to hurt people.

For prisons to be successful, it means having rules that protects the staff as well as inmates and sanctions for inmates as well as staff for when they break the rules. But not torture, but you broke a rule and there's a price to pay for that but we aren't going to do anything to you to make you worst than you already are. That even includes solitary confinement for inmates who attack other inmates and staff. But isolation should be there to make those inmates better, not to torture them and make them harder to deal with.

So in a humane prison, inmates are following the rules, making good use of their time by educating themselves and using those skills to get a good job while in prison but doing a good job in prison. Contributing to their cost of living and even to their victims and family and once they leave prison they now have the skills to succeed on the outside.

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Monday, March 18, 2013

Laura Flanders: ‘A Cure for Capitalism? Putting the Social Back in Socialism: Rick Wolff’

Source:Laura Flanders- Socialist Economist and Professor Richard Wolff.

“Employment’s up, wealth’s up, but the benefits of both are increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few. Welcome to capitalism, says GRITtv regular, Richard Wolff who suggests some alternatives, including “worker self-directed enterprises” if we want to democratize the economy, and US society.
GRITtv regular, Richard Wolff is the author of Capitalism Hits the Fan (Olive Branch Press, 2009) and, most recently, Democracy at Work: A Cure for Capitalism (Haymarket Books, 2012).”


I don’t get the idea that Richard Woolf is either a Communist, Marxist, or even somewhere in between where he would combine Marxist (meaning state-ownership of the economy) with a democratic political system.

Professor Wolff’s alternative to private enterprise and liberal democracy seems to be workers co-ownership, where private businesses would be owned by the workers. Not by stockholders or any particular individual or a board of directors.

As a Liberal, (meaning a real Liberal) I’m as pro-choice as any individual that you’ll ever meet and have no issues with private individuals getting together and starting co-ops on their own and making that decision on their own. I just don’t see how you do that nationally, especially federally and forcing every private company in America, including small private businesses, to become co-ops.

And then you have the other problem with how forcing every private company in America to become a co-op and what that would do to individualism, creativity, and competition, the things that not just the American economy has always thrived on, but needs to be successful, but where very other developed country in the world thrives on and needs to be successful as well.

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Monday, March 11, 2013

LWF: Noam Chomsky- The Purpose of Education


Source:LWF- Professor Noam Chomsky. 
“Noam Chomsky discusses the purpose of education, impact of technology, whether education should be perceived as a cost or an investment and the value of standardised assessment.

Presented at the Learning Without Frontiers Conference – Jan 25th 2012- London (LWF 12)”

Source:LWF

Source:LWF- MIT Professor Noam Chomsky.
The purpose of education is for people to learn what they need to know in order to be successful in life. Not teach them what to think, but how to think and how to learn so they can make the best out of all available important information out there.

What any successful democracy needs to be successful are people being able to learn and think for themselves, especially in a liberal democracy where information is more critical (I would argue) because we have more freedom to make our own decisions. Instead of living in a social democracy where more is expected from the central government to do for us.

The opposite of an educated, free society is a developing country, where there are simply not enough quality schools and educators to go around. And as a result you don’t have the educated workforce and consumer class needed to make your county a good investment. And as a result investors stay out of your country. Or an authoritarian state where the central government decides for everyone who lives there what people should know and what they should think. And for anyone who goes against that they are subjected to government sanctions.

A developed free society is an educated society. A society where people choose to live and stay, because it has the freedom and economic opportunity that people want and need to live well. And that starts first with parenting and then quality education. 

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The American Prospect: Robert Kuttner: 'When Public Is Better'

Source:Economic Policy Institute fellow Robert Kuttner.

"Long before we thought of founding The American Prospect in 1989, I came to know Paul Starr through a prescient article titled "Passive Intervention." The piece was published in 1979, in a now-defunct journal, Working Papers for a New Society.

As Paul and his co-author, Gøsta Esping-Andersen, observed, the American welfare state is built on terrible, even disabling compromises. Progressives often lack the votes to pass legislation to deliver public benefits directly. So they either create tax incentives or bribe the private sector to do the job, thus inflating a bloated system. "The problem is not too much government activism," they wrote, "but too much passivity."

Their two emblematic examples were housing and health care. In housing, tax advantages became an inflation hedge for the affluent and drove up prices. Low-income homeownership programs, run through the private sector, had huge default rates. In health care, the political compromises necessary to enact Medicare excluded serious cost containment. When they wrote this, health care consumed 9 percent of GDP compared to 17 percent today. The subprime mortgage scandal was decades in the future.

After 34 years, the same dynamics are far worse. In the run-up to the financial collapse, private securitization of subprime mortgages pretended to serve the social objective of increasing low-income homeownership. Nobody fully understood the risks-not the brokers who originated the loans, or the banks that sliced them into bonds, or the credit-rating companies that blessed them, and certainly not the regulators who feigned oversight. In the aftermath of the collapse, government now gives "incentive payments" to the very banks that created the mess, bribing them to modify mortgages in the hope of reducing foreclosures. This privatized program is a byzantine mess and a policy failure.

Better to have a public institution, such as the Roosevelt-era Home Owners' Loan Corporation, serve the public goal of refinancing homes directly. The HOLC was simplicity and transparency itself. As was the original public Fannie Mae. Both programs sold Treasury bonds to create credit for homeowners. No private players took a cut or generated extra cost and risk, and there were no scandals.

Passive intervention-serving public goals by making them lucrative private profit centers-not only increases costs; it increases complexity, which in turn invites inflation, confusion, and corruption. Though private abuse is responsible, government as sponsor gets the political blame.

Depending on how vigilant the government is, the Affordable Care Act ("Obamacare") could be a partial step to universal insurance-or another epic passive intervention. Rather than having government provide coverage directly, as Medicare does, the ACA requires people to purchase private insurance, subsidized for less affluent people and regulated by government.

But the more indirect the government involvement, the more it invites gaming. The press has been full of stories of big companies trying to break into units of fewer than 50 employees to evade the law's threshold requirements and employers shifting full-time workers covered by the ACA to part-timers who are not. In Massachusetts, where the model for Obamacare was invented, the state tolerates employer-provided plans that leave consumers on the hook for a huge share of medical bills.

Over time, public Medicare has become far better than private plans at lowering costs. However the ACA is not a public program but a fragmented private insurance pool. In principle, the ACA allows the new state "health exchanges" to exert bargaining power over private plans, but they may also merely list and certify private insurance products. So this hybrid could add yet another layer, with little effect on cost.

Complexity invites more complexity. Foundations and industry groups have launched a $100 million nonprofit called Enroll-America.org to sign up uninsured people-who have every reason to be confused. Money is wasted explaining how to enroll in a bewildering system that could have been simple and automatic had it been public social insurance. The multiple moving parts also facilitate Republican mischief at every stage. As consumers grow frustrated with the complexity, cost, and incomplete coverage, guess who will take the blame?

The privatized drug insurance that trades on Medicare's good name (Medicare Part D) is yet another example of the inefficiency of passive intervention. Direct, public prescription coverage would provide more benefit at less cost, by excluding industry middlemen. One could add the inefficiencies and corruption of privatized prisons and halfway houses, or for-profit voucher schools that do worse than their public counterparts.

Government, of course, should not run everything. But when it comes to social outlays, simpler is better, and simpler usually means direct government provision. Alas, government is in such low repute nowadays that legislatively, passive intervention is all liberals can get. For instance, President Obama, in proposing universal pre-kindergarten, did not dare suggest simply extending public education to three- and four-year-olds. The best we can expect is a patchwork of church-basement programs and for-profit preschool franchises.

It's time-long past time-for progressives to call out the inefficiencies of private provision of public goods and make a clear-throated defense of government. Otherwise, our government will keep taking the fall for the failures of private profiteers." 

Thursday, March 7, 2013

Shamus Cooke: 'Democrats & Labor: A Tale of Abuse'

Source:Counter Currents is a left-wing website.

"The Democratic Party’s participation in the recent national “sequester” cuts is yet another big dent in their love affair with organized labor. But break-ups are often a protracted process. Before a relationship ends there is usually a gradual deterioration based on irreconcilable differences, until the split becomes inevitable. The decades-long marriage of labor unions and the Democratic Party is nearing such a divorce. Labor unions are becoming frustrated as the Democrats flaunt their affair with corporate America and Wall Street.

What are some of the issues driving towards separation? It just seems that no matter how much labor leaders shower the politicians with money and affection, the Democrats just aren’t returning the love.

Although the Democrats were always a fickle partner, their coldness evolved into aggression under Bill Clinton, who oversaw a slew of anti-worker legislation, most notably NAFTA and welfare “reform.”

Obama has continued this rightwards trajectory, while portraying himself brilliantly as the “lesser evil” compared with the more honest anti-union rhetoric of the Republicans. He fulfilled none of his promises to labor in 2008, and essentially ignored all labor issues in his 2012 campaign. Labor leaders misinterpreted Obama as playing “hard to get,” when in fact the Democratic Party had already moved on.

To prove his fidelity to his new crush, Wall Street, Obama has made it a pet project to target the most powerful union in the country — the teachers’ union — for destruction. Obama’s innocent-sounding Race to the Top education reform is in actuality an anti-union dismembering of public education, with its promotion of charter schools and its mass closings of public high schools that Obama labels as “failing.” Bush, Jr.’s anti-union No Child Left Behind looks innocent compared to Obama’s education “reform.”

In fact, Obama has overseen the worst environment for organized labor since Ronald Reagan. But the problem is bigger than Obama. It’s the entire Democratic Party. For example, Democratic governors across the United States continue to work in tandem with Republicans in weakening public employee unions — the last bastion of real strength in the labor movement.

The Democrats have chosen to blame labor unions for the economic crisis and the consequent budget deficits affecting the states. These deficits have been used to attack the wages, health care, and pensions of public employees on a state-by-state basis, fundamentally weakening these unions while skewing the labor market in favor of the employers.

What some labor leaders fail to understand is that political parties like the Democrats are centralized organizations that share certain beliefs, and execute these ideas in a united fashion. It isn’t merely a coincidence that every Democratic governor in the United States has chosen a similar anti-labor path, its policy. There has been a fundamental shift in the Democratic Party’s relation to labor unions, and it is on display for everyone to see.

Not all labor leaders are feigning blindness to these facts. The president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union, Dennis Van Roekel, summarized teachers’ experience with the Obama Administration:

“Today our members face the most anti-educator, anti-union, anti-student environment I have ever experienced.” He was referring largely to Obama’s above-mentioned Race to the Top education program.

Van Roekel’s union, the National Education Association (NEA), also passed an excellent resolution at their national convention blasting Obama’s Education Secretary, Arne Duncan, for his anti-public education and anti-union policies.

But of course Arne Duncan is simply implementing the policies of his boss, President Obama. And Obama is simply implementing the policies of his boss, corporate America, which is insisting that market relations are imposed on public education. After passing the above resolution, the NEA leadership shamefully pressured its membership to campaign for the Obama Administration, akin to a survivor of domestic violence going to bat for the batterer.

The president of the large national public employee union American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), Lee Saunders, also lashed out against the Democrats recently:

I am sick and tired of the fair-weather Democrats. They date us, take us to the prom, marry us, and then divorce us right after the honeymoon. I am sick and tired of the so-called friends who commend us when they’re running for election, but condemn us after they’ve won. I am sick and tired of the politicians who stand with us behind closed doors, but kick us to the curb in front of the cameras. I’m here to tell you that’s bullshit and we’re not gonna take it anymore.

Accurate remarks, but they were limited to a couple of select Democratic mayors and governors. Again, there is more than a “few bad apple” Democrats who are anti-labor; the whole party is sick with this cancer.

In private, all labor leaders acknowledge this fact. Politico reports:

Top labor leaders excoriated President Barack Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in a closed session of the AFL-CIO’s executive board meeting…Furious union presidents complained about budget cuts, a new [free] trade agreement and what some view as their abandonment, even by their typically reliable allies among Senate Democrats.

Presidents of several unions and an AFL-CIO spokesman declined to repeat their private criticism to a reporter Tuesday, a sign that labor feels it must still try to maintain a relationship with the Democratic Party, even if it’s deeply troubled.

So while the presidents of these unions speak honestly amongst themselves, they feel obligated to mis-educate their membership about the above facts. Labor leaders consistently minimize the Democrats’ role in anti-union policies, while exaggerating any morsel that can be construed to be pro-union. A mis-educated union membership makes for a weakened union movement.

When President Obama gave a largely right-wing state of the union address that included more corporate free trade agreements, more education “reform,” cuts to Medicare, and no plan to address the ongoing jobs crisis, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka responded shamefully by saying:

Tonight, President Obama sent a clear message to the world that he will stand and fight for working America’s values and priorities.

Again, Trumka knows better. He should tell union members the truth. The AFL-CIO and other unions have lied about President Obama’s role in the national “sequester” cuts, blaming the whole thing on the Republicans. The truth, however, is that Obama formed the “the deficit reduction committee” that gave birth to the sequester. He failed to take any significant action to prevent the cuts, because he agrees with them.

Rank-and-file union members aren’t stupid. They realize it when their paychecks shrink, when their health care costs skyrocket, when their pensions are destroyed, when they’re laid off, or when they campaign for Democrats who betray them post-election. Union leaders are creating distrust within their membership as they continue down a political road that has left labor weakened and politically tied to a “partner” that’s abusing it.

The Democrats have gone “all in” with Wall Street and the corporations. The big banks now feel as comfortable throwing campaign donations towards the Democrats as the Republicans. Labor unions can’t compete with Wall Street’s cash.

Breaking with the Democrats is long overdue. And once this is done union members will likely choose the path taken by labor unions in nearly every developed country: the creation of a labor party, with its own platform, funding, and member activists.

Such a party could appeal directly to all working people by demanding that a federal jobs program be immediately implemented to put those unemployed to work as well as fighting to save and expand Social Security and Medicare, while taxing the rich and corporations to fully fund public education and other social services. Such a platform would create a massive contrast to the mainstream corporate-bought parties that exist today, and thus attract millions of members and millions more voters." 

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

The American Prospect: Scott Lemieux: 'Fear & The New Deal'

Source:The American Prospect columnist Scott Lemieux.

"FDR ascended to the White House 80 years ago. How has his legacy—and the legacy of his landmark legislation—shifted in the years since?

In 1942, Congress passed legislation attempting to facilitate voting by soldiers stationed overseas. Passed too close to the date of the general election (and after the primary election season) and creating a cumbersome process, the bill was ineffective. As the number of American soliders overseas continued to increase, the lack of practical access to the ballot was intolerable to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He sent a bill to Congress in 1944 that would have created a simple federal ballot made it much easier for soldiers to make their voices heard. Despite having the authority of a wartime president, however, the bill failed. Congress instead passed a much weaker version, more similar to the 1942 statute, that did not send out a uniform federal ballot and left administration in the hands of the states. Fewer than 33 percent of eligible soldiers were able to vote in the 1944 elections. How, during the height of wartime, could such a basic democratic right be denied many soldiers risking their lives for their country?

The answer, as Ira Katznelson details in his brilliant new book Fear Itself, is that a coalition of Republicans (who believed that soldiers largely represented a pro-FDR demographic) and Southern Democrats (who feared that even this limited form of federal intervention would threaten Jim Crow) wanted to limit ballot access for soldiers. The clash between the imperatives of war and the constraints of congressional politics makes the failure of FDR's 1944 bill a paradigmatic New Deal story. Eighty years ago yesterday, FDR famously said during his First Inaugural Address that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." The New Deal-which Katznelson argues should be seen as encompassing the period between the election of FDR in 1932 and the election of Eisenhower 20 years later-was, according to Fear Itself, conducted in the shadow of three major fears. First, there was the fear about whether democracy could survive the Great Depression as countries such as Germany, Italy, and Japan turned to authoritarian responses. Second, there was the fear protecting national security respresented, first by World War II and then by the Cold War and the atomic age. And third, and crucially, was the Southern fear that its system of white supremacy would not survive. The first two fears created an impetus for unprecedented federal action, but this federal action was, throughout the New Deal, shaped and constrained by the third fear.

One of the many strengths of Fear Itself is that it brings Congress back to center stage in the New Deal era. American politics past tend to be retrospectively seen through the lens of the presidency, an impulse that is particularly understandable with respect to FDR, who almost certainly did more to shape the political landscape than any politician of the last century. And yet, FDR (and, to an even greater extent) Truman were frequently constrained by Congress, with expansions of executive power often made at the initiative of Congress. And the importance of congressional power meant power for the Jim Crow South-because liberal Democrats never constituted a majority by themselves even in an era in which Democrats generally had huge majorities in both houses of Congress, southern Democratic support was frequently needed for legislation to pass. And because the one-party South meant lengthy tenures for many key southern congressmen, Southern Democrats used control the committee system to gain even more influence over the congressional agenda than their raw numbers would indicate. This influence was, of course, largely pernicious. As the opening story about the denial of ballot access to soldiers indicates, the most important impact of the ability of the Solid South to act as a veto point was that New Deal legislation had to be perceived as leaving Southern white supremacy undisturbed. As a result, the African-Americans who most needed New Deal benefits were given a disproportionately small share.

The New Deal required, as Katznelson puts it, "pragmatic forgetfulness" on the part of FDR and northern liberals in Congress about the horrific injustices of the apartheid South. The pension and unemployment systems established by the Social Security Act, for example, purposely excluded predominantly African-American agricultural and domestic workers from benefits, and this policy of racial exclusion was exacerbated by decentralized control that led to more discriminatory enforcement. Southern Democrats were also crucial to overriding Truman's veto of the Taft-Hartley Act, which devastated the American labor movement and intentionally broadened the definitions of agricultural and domestic work in ways that made it much more difficult for African-Americans to organize. And yet-nothing about the politics of the New Deal is straightforward-the influence of Southern Democrats was not uniformly negative. From 1933 to 1938, Southern Democrats were strong supporters of many New Deal initiatives. This support was not simply a matter of being cowed by FDR's use of the bully pulpit or arm-twisting. As Katznelson points out, even Theodore Bilbo, the cartoonishly demagogic racist senator from Mississippi, supported progressive economic policy as a state politician. (The Deep South in the 1930s was too poor to afford economic libertarianism.) There were even times when Southern Democrats staked out a position to FDR's left-most notably, attaching a major public works program to the Industrial Recovery Act of 1933 that FDR (who never fully abandoned his fiscally conservative instincts) didn't want.

Particularly important and complex, as the fears of fascist domination of Europe and then nuclear annihilation took center stage, is the role of Southern Democrats in national security policy. Southern Democrats were crucial to overcoming Republican isolationism and facilitating a robust American intervention into World War II. Somewhat surprisingly, Katznelson argues, the public officials and editorial boards who most supported white supremacy at home were also among the most committed to fighting the (admittedly even more extreme) version abroad. However, the commitment of Southern Democrats to the national-security state also persisted in its more dangerous aspects. The growth of the security state and its ongoing threats to civil liberties and lives, Katznelson reminds us, was not a simple matter of presidential usurpation: "Every key building block of the national security state that was developed during the Truman years required and secured congressional approval." Southern Democrats were often crucial to overcoming the opposition of isolationist Republicans and liberal Democrats and building the militar-industrial complex.

One of the many virtues of this masterful book is that it rescues the tragedies and ironies of the New Deal from the facile "liberal fascism" taunts from the likes of Jonah Goldberg. American political institutions may have demanded a Faustian bargain in return for comprehensive Great Depression policies, but that does not discredit the progressive accomplishments of the New Deal. White supremacy constrained and shaped the New Deal because in the early 20th century American polity, white supremacy and the tolerance of white supremacy were nearly ubiquitous among political elites of all ideological stripes. From William Howard Taft's disavowal of any interest in civil rights to the overwhelming Senate Republican opposition to allowing an anti-lynching bill to come up a vote to the conservative coalition that dominated Congress between 1938 and 1964, racism was hardly something that only affected the Democratic coalition. And it was economic progressives, not conservatives, who ultimately embraced civil rights under Lyndon Johnson."

Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Hubert Humphrey: '1948 Civil Rights Speech'

Source:American Speeches- Minneapolis, Minnesota Mayor Hubert H. Humphrey, at the 1948 Democratic National Convention.

"Hubert Humphrey gave this speech supporting civil rights, causing 35 delegates from Mississippi and Alabama to walk out of the 1948 Democratic National Convention. Humphrey urged the Democratic Party to "get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights".  When President Truman endorsed this civil rights plank, governor of South Carolina Strom Thurmond helped organize the walkout of delegates into a separate party. The party Thurmond formed was called the "Dixiecrats" and it's racist slogan was "Segregation Forever!". 

From American Speeches

To know that Hubert Humphrey was a great man, all you have to do is look at or watch his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech on civil rights and to know that he was also ahead of his time. 

Just look at or listen to Hubert Humphrey's civil rights speech and this was even before he was elected to the U.S. Senate. Humphrey wasn't in Congress at all when he gave this speech (House or Senate) but a 1948 U.S. Senate candidate. 

And also to know how far ahead of his time he was, the civil rights movement didn't exist at all in the late 1940s at least as a national movement. But to a large extent at least on civil rights, Humphrey wasn't governed by what was popular at the time when he was the Deputy Leader of the U.S. Senate in 1964 and pushing the civil rights laws then. 

Civil rights was still not very popular in this country and Senator Humphrey in 1964 probably already knew and Lyndon Johnson certainly knew that passing civil rights laws was going to hurt the Democratic Party in the South and thats exactly what happened.

Leadership is not about what's doing what is popular at the time but what's the right thing to do at the time. And thats exactly what Hubert Humphrey did with this civil rights speech in 1948. And what he did in his entire career in Congress in the 1940s, 50s and 60s and civil rights is just an example of that.

Politzane: 'Wealth Inequality in America'

Source:POLITIZANE with a look at what left-wingers call wealth inequality.

"Infographics on the distribution of wealth in America, highlighting both the inequality and the difference between our perception of inequality and the actual numbers. The reality is often not what we think it is." 


My guess my main point and response to this is: who gets to decide what's fair when it comes to income distribution? I guess technically the government and the people who are elected to represent us. But those folks by-in-large, aren't saying that it's somehow unfair that doctors and lawyers are millionaires, while janitors, bus driver, taxi drivers, etc, the workers who might only need a high school diploma, if that, to do their job, work really hard, just to pay their bills. 

There are exceptions to every rule, like people inheriting wealth, marrying wealth, etc. But by-in--large, with our liberal democratic, capitalist system, you get out of this economy, what you put into it. You get yourself a good education, you develop your talents and then apply them really well, you are probably going to do very well in America. But if you don't, perhaps you didn't even finish high school, life for you will probably be a major struggle. But there are exceptions to that rule as well, like with entertainers and people who marry up. And I don't see what's unfair about that. 

Monday, March 4, 2013

Akshay Pahilajani: Professor Noam Chomsky- On Liberalism (1977)

Source:Akshay Pahilajani- MIT Professor Noam Chomsky talking about liberalism in 1977.

“Noam Chomsky on Liberalism. Excerpt from a BBC interview in 1977”

I like what Professor Chomsky said early on in this video, because that’s exactly what I could base this entire piece around. This one point where he says that liberalism when it was first developed was anti-establishment (And I would add anti-centralization of power)

What Professor Chomsky is essentially talking about what’s called classical liberalism. I don’t call it classical liberalism myself, as a Liberal, but that’s what the so-called mainstream media, as well as closeted Socialists or Leftists, who don’t like those terms. So they call what used to be just known as liberalism, neoliberalism or classical liberalism.

But what has always been known as liberalism, before leftists (democratic and otherwise tried to hijack the philosophy) has been a political philosophy that’s built around advancing individual, human rights and defending liberty for all, not some, but for everybody. Not about advancing the state and the role of the state, especially the national state, believing that the more power and money that the national government has, the better off everyone will be. Which is what Socialists (democratic and otherwise) believe, not real Liberals. 

You can also see this post on WordPress.

Sunday, March 3, 2013

Divinity: Dr. Martin L. King: Last Speech in Memphis (1968)

Source:Divinity- Dr. Martin L. King speaking in Memphis, Tennessee, in April, 1968.

Source:The Daily Journal

“I Have Been to the Mountaintop Full Speech” 

From Divinity

I don’t believe there are many people perhaps in the history of the world, but certainly in the history of the United States who had better timing than Martin L. King. And I say that for a few reasons, but just take when Reverend King gave this speech and when he died which was the next day in 1968 and then look at, or listen to what Reverend King said in this speech and what was in it and what he had to say. Which I at least believe was vision for what the civil rights movement was all about.

Dr. King laid out in his last speech what it means to be an American no matter your race in a liberal democracy such as the United States. Where we all under the United States Constitution are to be treated equally under law with the same constitutional rights and freedoms as any other American. That we aren’t supposed to be treated better, or worse by law in this country. And that’s just one reason why the way African-Americans were treated in America prior to the civil rights laws of the 1960s was simply unconstitutional. Because African-Americans were treated worse than Caucasian-Americans under law in this country.

What Reverend King was saying in this speech was that he’s seen the mountaintop of where all Americans were being treated equally under law. That this vision is real where no American has to live in poverty without the basic necessities and skills to be able to live well in life. That we aren’t there yet and you might not see him there with you, but this vision is real and we can get there together as a people if we keep moving forward as a people and a country to build this society where no race of people is treated worse under law simply based on their race.

Dr. King said that we can accomplish this Utopia in America and get there together if we keep up the fight and struggle for equal and human rights in this country until we finally reach the mountaintop. And finally accomplish what we’ve struggled for all of these years.

Thats what this speech was about as far as I’m concern at least and what Reverend King was telling his supporters, that even if you don’t see him there with you, he’s already seen the vision of what we are fighting for. And know we can get there if we keep on moving the ball forward until we get there. 

Robert F. Kennedy For President: 1968 Campaign Ad

Source:Robert F. Kennedy For President-  this is from a 1968 RFK For President campaign ad for Nebraska.
Source:The Daily Journal

“RFK campaign ad 1968, directed by John Frankenheimer (“The Manchurian Candidate”)”


The environmental movement in the late 1960s, which was just becoming big to the point today and perhaps even twenty-years ago that national Democrats at least couldn’t win without them, especially if they were running for president. But Democrats they couldn’t win in Congress without the environmental community unless they represented a very rural state, or district that was heavily dependent on oil, gas and coal. States like West Virginia, to use as an example.

America changed a lot politically in the 1960s where the Democratic Party started truly becoming the progressive party and the Republican Party starting to become the conservative party. With both parties still have moderate factions in them, but just not as big as they use to be.

Senator Kennedy, made the environment a big part of his 1968 presidential campaign. But it was more about regulations of energy industries and not so much about his own national energy policy. And had he been elected president in 1968, we probably get an EPA and perhaps an Energy Department as well. Instead of President Richard Nixon creating the EPA and President Jimmy Carter creating the Energy Department.

It was also President Nixon that pushed for the idea of a national energy policy and getting off of foreign oil and gas. President Gerald Ford and President Carter, wanted to do the same thing, but differently at least in President Carter’s case. But making the environment a real issue was still very new when Bobby Kennedy ran for president in 1968.

Saturday, March 2, 2013

Salon Magazine: Mugambi Jouet: 'In Prison Debate, Race Overshadows Poverty'

Source:Salon Magazine with a look at America prisons.

"The way to stop filling up prisons is to end the War on Drugs, curb inequality and change our perspective on class. 

Racial discrimination is often used to explain the fact that 1 percent of American adults is behind bars and that we're the only Western democracy not to have abolished the death penalty. Given that America’s prisoners are disproportionately black and Hispanic, this is understandable. But what's often overlooked is class -- even though the clear majority of white, black and Hispanic prisoners stems from the underclass and working class.

Criminal justice systems are largely a reflection of economic systems. It is no coincidence that their practices are the most humane in Scandinavian countries, known for their high degree of economic solidarity. In a society marked by sharp wealth inequality, such as modern-day America, the criminal justice system can come to negate solidarity and embody the notion that those at the bottom rungs of society are little more than a nuisance. Thus, the U.S. criminal justice system emphasizes harsh retribution, disfavors rehabilitation and tends to ignore social factors behind crime, such as poverty, failing public schools or lax gun control.

America could put an end to mass incarceration by following the example of other Western democracies. Prison terms in those countries are much shorter in all types of cases, and very lengthy terms are usually reserved for the worst offenders. With regard to nonviolent offenders, these countries are also less likely to rely on incarceration as opposed to fines or probation. In addition to other reforms, America should therefore abandon peculiar and counterproductive policies like the “War on Drugs,” “three strikes laws” and harsh mandatory-minimum stays in prison.

Authorizing the recreational use of marijuana — like the Netherlands, Colorado and Washington have done — could go a long way. In 2011, over 750,000 people were arrested for marijuana offenses in America, 87 percent of whom were charged with possession only. As documented by Michelle Alexander in her book "The New Jim Crow," local police departments have received substantial federal funding to aggressively pursue minor offenders as part of the “War on Drugs.” Such incentives should be eliminated.

However, it is difficult to imagine meaningful reforms without a change of perspective. The main reason why mass incarceration exists — despite well-known solutions — is that few Americans consider it a real “problem.” Only a segment of the public is even aware that America has by far the world’s top incarceration rate. Some citizens feel concerned, but many think that draconian punishments are “just deserts,” a public safety imperative or both. Neither political party genuinely aims to tackle the issue.

Efforts to reform the system have been minimal because the premises behind harsh punishments tend to stay the same. For instance, voters recently scaled back California’s “three strikes” law. The third strike will now have to be for a “serious or violent” crime, with various exceptions. But penalties remain draconian — instead of 25-years-to-life for a third strike, nonviolent offenders will now get a sentence twice as long as normal. That is still an extremely long time, given that “normal” sentences nowadays are far lengthier than in other Western democracies and than they were in America before the rise of the “tough on crime” movement. But California’s reform is a step forward. Certain nonviolent prisoners are now in the process of being resentenced to shorter prison terms or are being released after having served extensive time.

Supporters of mass incarceration have been relatively successful at labeling advocates of reform “soft on crime.” In order to move forward, the public will have to prove more discerning and not be swayed by the politicians, judges and prosecutors who campaign for office by exploiting fear of crime. Needless to say, elected officials will also have to refrain from demagoguery and develop the will to push for what may be unpopular reforms, a change that seems implausible nowadays.

Most importantly, an end to mass incarceration is hard to foresee without a shift towards a socio-economic system rooted in greater equality and solidarity. The fact that prisoners mainly stem from the underclass and working class prevents certain Americans from identifying with them. As long as prisoners are commonly dehumanized, much of the general public and political leadership may be unwilling to accept significant criminal justice reform. While racial discrimination and other factors help explain mass incarceration, the lowly social status of poor people of all colors at a time of acute wealth inequality is a key reason why over 2.2 million human beings live behind bars in modern-day America."