Governor Gary Johnson & Sheriff Joe Arpaio: 'Prison Industrial Complex'

Source:Randy 7845- Maricopa County, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio.

"This is a clip from the film "American Drug War: The Last White Hope"

From Randy 7845

I think two things that we know that really don't work when it comes to prison reform, is locking up drug addicts for simple drug possession or usage, thinking that if we just take their freedom away, they will get their act together and quit illegal narcotics all together. And with all due respect to Governor Gary Johnson who I respect as a Classical Liberal myself, we know that prisons don't work either.

40 years after President Richard Nixon declared the so-called War On Drugs, we have the most drug addicts, even on a per-capita basis, of any country in the developed world. So we know treating drug addicts who are guilty of nothing other than illegal possession or usage or illegal narcotics, like common felons, doesn't work. 

We know private prisons doesn't work, because the private prison industry is a for-profit industry. Nothing wrong with for-profit, for the most part, but when you incentivize private companies to lock people up, even if they're no real threat to society, they're going to try to lock up as many people as possible, to get as much money as possible. And, they're going to try to extend the prison sentences of their current inmates, to get more money from taxpayers to pay for their prisons. As well as lobby legislatures and executives for more laws and harsher sanctions for people who commit felonies.

The Young Turks: Ana Kasparian & Cenk Uygur: '1 in 4 Americans Have Criminal Record'

Source:The Young Turks- under arrest in America.

"Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur discuss statistics from the National Employment Law Center showing that 1 in 4 adults in the United States has a criminal record.  The ACLU argues that employers are discriminating against employees on this bases because a disproportionate number of those with records are African American (and non-violent drug offenders)." 

From The Young Turks

I agree for the most part with Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur here. (Maybe it does snow in San Diego in August) The so-called war on drugs (thanks, President Nixon) is the main culprit to why we have so many people in prison in America, which is supposed to be the greatest liberal democracy in the world. And I believe America is, but our criminal justice system or lack or a quality criminal justice system, makes us seem like less than the great liberal democracy that we actually are. 

Arresting drug addicts and then sending to prison for simply possessing and using illegal narcotics, or being addicted to them, is never a good idea and is always a costly idea. You send those folks to drug rehab and later halfway houses, at their complete expense and put the illegal narcotics dealers in prison instead. 

We should also stop arresting adults for simply possessing or using marijuana or gambling their own money or selling their sex, as we could literally end the war on freedom in America and not have so many people in prison, simply for what they to themselves, not what they do to others.

President John F. Kennedy: 1962 Speech on Tax Cuts

Source:Spectator 1828- Classical Liberal  President John F. Kennedy.

"An excerpt from John F Kennedy's address to the Economic Club of New York on 14 December 1962. Text & audio of the full speech here: American Rhetoric"

From Spectator 

“General Royall, Mr. Trippe, Mr. Rockefeller, General Clay, gentlemen:

I feel tonight somewhat like I felt when I addressed in 1960 the Houston Ministers Conference on the separation of church and state. But I am glad to have a chance to talk to you tonight about the advantages of the free enterprise system.

Less than a month ago, this nation reminded the world that it possessed both the will and the weapons to meet any threat to the security of free men. The gains we have made will not be given up and the course that we have pursued will not be abandoned. But in the long run, that security will not be determined by military or diplomatic moves alone. It will be affected by the decisions of finance ministers, as well as by the decisions of Secretaries of State and Secretaries of Defense; by the deployment of fiscal and monetary weapons, as well as by military weapons; and, above all, by the strength of this nation’s economy, as well as by the strength of our defenses.”

Source:American Rhetoric- President John F. Kennedy (Democrat, Massachusetts) talking about his tax reform plan in 1962.

From American Rhetoric

First of all, I want to thank my friend and one of my subscribers Brendan Owens from Facebook for giving me the inspiration to write this blog post about tax cuts. Parts of the last two nights we've been debating tax cuts on Facebook as good friends can do in a respectful way. He's a self-described Democratic Socialist. I don't say that to be insulting, but thats how he describes his politics. I'm a self-described Liberal Democrat, so we have plenty to debate about outside of social issues, where we tend to agree. At least so far, we haven't discussed gun rights yet, but maybe in the future.

Jack Kennedy, a political hero of mine and I know I've said this many times, but it's definitely true. Inherited a recession, or a weak economy when he became President in 1961. The economy boomed for the most part in the 1950s under the Eisenhower Administration. But went into recession in I believe in 1958. It cost the Republican Party a bunch of seats in Congress that year. As Congressional Democrats added to their majorities, thanks to the Southern Conservative Caucus and others. And proposed an Economic Recovery Act that had I believe at the time the largest tax cut in American history.

Back then, we had tax rates ranging from 25-90%. Thank God for all of the tax deductions! Or our economy would be like Russia, with basically no property rights. Basically the Federal Government would take most of your money from you in income and payroll taxes and then let you decide how much of it you could get back in order to pay your bills. It was redistribution of your own wealth through high tax rates.

President Kennedy, recognized that those high tax rates were slowing down economic growth and economic incentive for people to work hard and make a good living. Because the Federal Government would collect so much of the money. Those high tax rates didn't make much sense even from a socialist point of view other than to hold down the rich or something. Because America still didn't have much of a safety net. This was right before the Great Society.

The 1960s, was one of the best decades we've ever had economically at least in the 20th Century. With high economic and job growth for most of that decade and low unemployment. One of the reasons why President Johnson was elected in a landslide in 1964 and if it wasn't for the Vietnam War, he probably would've been reelected in a landslide as well. The Kennedy tax cuts by the way: we ain't talking about Goldwater-Reagan or Kemp-Roth, but Jack Kennedy a Liberal Democrat, was a big part for the 1960s economic expansion. And it wasn't a supply side tax cut, but they paid for it by eliminating tax loopholes.

The Kennedy tax cuts, had tax reform in it. Lower tax rates while eliminating tax loopholes. Letting people keep more of their money for them to decide how to spend it. Encouraging people to be more productive, because they would get to keep more of their money as a result. Instead of the Federal Government taking most of it from them. The Kennedy tax cuts plus the Vietnam War with the boom in the military industry as well as people being sent to Vietnam opening up more jobs at home, are reasons for the economic expansion of the 1960s.

In 1978 Representative Jack Kemp and Senator Bill Roth, two Conservative Republican members of Congress, proposed their own tax cuts that later became the 1981 Economic Recovery Act that President Reagan singed into law. It did help jump start the economy and lead to the economic boom of the 1980s. But the difference being President Reagan didn't pay for his tax cuts, or even propose to do so. He didn't propose on balanced budget plan to Congress his entire eight years. He had a Republican Senate for six years. His theory was that supply side tax cuts pay for themselves. He was wrong if you look at the mountain of debt as a result in his government expansion and tax cuts. But President Kennedy was an inspiration for their tax cuts.

You can also see this post on WordPress. 

Michael Moore: 'America is a Liberal Nation'

Source:FORA-TV- Filmmaker and New-Left political activist Michael Moore.

"Filmmaker Michael Moore cites Americans' positions on several issues to support his claim that America is a predominantly liberal nation. 

Here Comes Trouble: Stories from My Life is an unflinchingly honest, take-no-prisoners ride through the life of Oscar-winning filmmaker and bestselling author Michael Moore. Moore shares far-ranging, irreverent, and stranger-than-fiction vignettes from his early life. One moment he's an 11-year-old boy lost in the Senate and found by Bobby Kennedy; and in the next, he's inside the Bitburg cemetery with Ronald Reagan. At 17, he goes to get a snack and ends up on the news, creating a firestorm that helps eliminate racial discrimination at private establishments across America. Funny, eye-opening, and moving, it's the book he has been writing and living his entire life. - Sixth & I Historic Synagogue

Michael Moore is an Academy Award-winning American filmmaker, author and liberal political commentator. He is the director and producer of Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11, and Sicko, three of the top five highest-grossing documentaries of all time. In September 2008, he released his first free movie on the Internet, Slacker Uprising, documenting his personal crusade to encourage more Americans to vote in presidential elections. He has also written and starred in the TV shows "TV Nation" and "The Awful Truth." Moore is a self-described liberal who has criticized globalization, large corporations, assault weapon ownership, the Iraq War, U.S. President George W. Bush and the American health care system in his written and cinematic works. In 2005, Time magazine named him one of the world's 100 most influential people." 

From FORA-TV 

"Michael Moore announced the release date of and showed off footage from his upcoming documentary focused on President Donald Trump during his appearance on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.’" 

Source:The Hollywood Reporter- Filmmaker and New-Left political activist Michael Moore, on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.

From The Hollywood Reporter 

I don't mean to sound wishy-wash here, or some type of establishment Democrat whose scared for their political life about offending both their left-wing, as well as Center-Left and Independent voters that have voted from them in the past, but it depends on what you mean by a Liberal when it comes to whether America is a liberal nation or not.  

Americans tend to believe in both personal freedom and economic freedom, which is what liberal democracy is about. We don't tend to be antigovernment, but we don't want government trying to run our lives for us and trying to make the very same economic and personal decisions that most Americans have been making for most of their adult lives. 

Americans tend to want government to: 

Protect our streets 

Defend our borders 

Prevent foreign invaders from attacking 

Pay for the infrastructure that we all use 

Pay for good schools and teachers 

Help people who've fallen on hard times get back on their own feet

Regulate the private market to protect workers and consumers from predators, but not try to run private businesses.  

What I've just laid out are some basic not just liberal or American, but common sense values of people tend to want government to do for them and are willing to pay government to do for them. So if that's what your idea of a Liberal is, then I guess we are a liberal nation. 

But if you believe that Liberals believe private, for-profit, corporations, by definition are bad things, or that independent wealth is a bad thing, that the world is too big and complicated a place to let individuals manage their own affairs for themselves and you need big government to do that for them, or capitalism is racist, personal freedom is dangerous, free speech is bigoted, then no, we're not a liberal nation. But those aren't liberal values. 

Liberal values are the values that come from liberal democracy, which is based around individual rights, equal rights and justice, limited government, and the rule of law. Not social democracy or communism.  

You can also see this post on WordPress. 

Hoover Institution: Uncommon Knowledge With Peter Robinson: 'The Great Depression With Amity Shlaes'

Source:Hoover Institution- right-wing presidential historian Amity Shlaes on Uncommon Knowledge with Peter Robinson.

"Amity Shlaes challenges the received wisdom that the Great Depression occurred because capitalism broke and that it ended because FDR, and government in general, came to the rescue. According to Shlaes, it was the government that made the Great Depression worse. And was FDRs progressivism, as evident in the New Deal, really all that new, or was it a step along a progressive continuum that already had been established?" 

From the Hoover Institution

Anyone whose familiar with this blog, knows I'm not a big fan of the New Deal and knows I don't think it was a perfect economic agenda. It obviously didn't get us out of the Great Depression. Unemployment was still around 20% by the time we entered World War II in 1941-42. But to argue that the Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal made the Great Depression even worst, my question would be: compared with what? 

To understand the Great Depression, you have to know about the New Deal, but also what the alternatives to the New Deal. The real Socialists (not the FDR Progressives) were talking about nationalizing private industries to prevent a future Great Depression. 

The Conservatives of the time were talking about doing nothing. They were literally talking about doing nothing in response to the Great Depression and let the so-called free market (as if there's such a thing as a free market) would automatically fix the problems of the New Deal. They were literally arguing a negative, since we have no evidence and history of doing nothing to respond to economic crisis's, actually works.  If you look at the New Deal objectively, (which might might be hard to do) it was actually the middle approach to what the Conservatives wanted to do and what the Socialists and Communists wanted to do to deal with the Great Depression.

Again, the New Deal was obviously not perfect, but to argue that it made the Great Depression worst, I mean we were back to economic growth by 1934-35 and people did go back to work. Millions of Americans were getting economic assistance to help them get through the Great Depression, like Unemployment Insurance. "The New Deal made the Great Depression worst" sounds like good right-wing talking points, but that's about it.

Hardball With Chris Matthews: U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner: Health Care (2009)

Source:MSNBC- U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner (Democrat, New York) in 2009.

"You Tube the name " Wendell Potter " and see what you are supporting if you are opposed to reform.

Health Care For Patients, NOT For Profit because Health Care For Profit is Health Care DENIED.

Under NO CIRCUMSTANCES should an insurance middleman come between a patient and his/her doctor - particularly, if the insurance middleman stands to gain from it.

To put it simply, IT'S A CONFLICT OF INTEREST.

Insurance has no business being in Health Care. They contribute nothing towards it. NOTHING!" 

From Robb 1031 

Back in 2009/10, there was a block of left-wing House Democrats who said they wouldn't vote for any health care reform bill, that didn't have a public option in it. Representative Anthony Weiner (Democrat, New York) was part of that left-wing block in the House. They're argument was that they wanted single payer and government-run, health insurance (if not health care reform) was their position and the public option and allowing non-seniors to pay into Medicare and use that as their own health insurance. The fact is the Affordable Care Act was passed in March, 2010 and it didn't have a public option in it. It had subsides for lower middle class workers, as well as a Patient Bill of Rights for everyone. 

I've never been a fan of Anthony Weiner to begin with, but this is probably the main reason. Forget the fact that he's a left-wing, closeted Democratic Socialist, I could live with that, if I didn't have to vote for him and he didn't officially represent me. It's the: "Do it might way, or we don't it at all." approach to American politics, especially in a Democratic Party that's so diverse and large, that has both a Far-Left and Center-Right, as well as Center-Left, where you have to be able to work with members of your own party, just to get anything done in this country. 

Russia Today: Amiri Baraka- 'I Wish The U.S. Was a Communist Country'

Source:Russia Today- Amiri Baraka talking to President Vladimir Putin's Russia Today, about communism and socialism.

"RT (formerly Russia Today) is a Russian state-controlled[1] international television network funded by the federal tax budget of the Russian government.[15][16] It operates pay television channels directed to audiences outside of Russia, as well as providing Internet content in English, Spanish, French, German, Arabic, and Russian.

RT is a brand of TV-Novosti, an "autonomous non-profit organization" founded by the Russian state-owned news agency RIA Novosti in April 2005.[10][17] During the economic crisis in December 2008, the Russian government, headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, included ANO "TV-Novosti" on its list of core organizations of strategic importance to Russia.[18][19][20] RT operates as a multilingual service with channels in five languages: the original English-language channel was launched in 2005, the Arabic-language channel in 2007, Spanish in 2009, German in 2014 and French in 2017. RT America (since 2010),[21] RT UK (since 2014) and other regional channels also produce local content. RT is the parent company of the Ruptly video agency,[5][6][7] which owns the Redfish video channel and the Maffick digital media company.[8][9]

RT has been described as a major propaganda outlet for the Russian government and its foreign policy.[2] Academics, fact-checkers, and news reporters (including some current and former RT reporters) have identified RT as a purveyor of disinformation[42] and conspiracy theories.[48] UK media regulator Ofcom has repeatedly found RT to have breached its rules on impartiality, including multiple instances in which RT broadcast "materially misleading" content.[55] RT's editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan compared the channel to the Ministry of Defence and stated that it was "waging an information war, and with the entire Western world".[16][56] In September 2017, RT America was ordered to register as a "foreign agent" with the United States Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.[57] RT has been banned in Ukraine since 2014,[58] and in Latvia[59] and Lithuania[60] since 2020." 

From Wikipedia 

"Amiri Baraka, a poet and political activist, spoke with RT about communism as a perfect system, as well as about detainee torture in the US and reasons behind America not preventing the 9/11 tragedy." 

From Russia Today 

"Communism (from Latin communis, 'common, universal')[1][2] is a philosophical, social, political, and economic ideology and movement whose ultimate goal is the establishment of a communist society, namely a socioeconomic order structured upon the ideas of common ownership of the means of production and the absence of social classes, money,[3][4] and the state.[5][6] As such, communism is a specific form of socialism.

Communism includes a variety of schools of thought which broadly include Marxism and anarcho-communism as well as the political ideologies grouped around both, all of which share the analysis that the current order of society stems from capitalism, its economic system and mode of production, namely that in this system there are two major social classes, the relationship between these two classes is exploitative, and that this situation can only ultimately be resolved through a social revolution.[7] The two classes are the proletariat (the working class), who make up the majority of the population within society and must work to survive; and the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class), a small minority who derives profit from employing the working class through private ownership of the means of production. According to this analysis, revolution would put the working class in power and in turn establish social ownership of the means of production which is the primary element in the transformation of society towards communism.[7]

After 1917, a number of states were identified as communist: these states espoused Marxism–Leninism or a variation of it.[8] Along with social democracy, communism became the dominant political tendency within the international socialist movement by the 1920s.[9] The emergence of the Soviet Union as the world's first nominally communist state led to communism's widespread association with Marxism–Leninism and the Soviet economic model.[1][a][10] While the term "communist state" is used by Western historians, political scientists and media to refer to countries ruled by communist parties, these states themselves did not describe themselves as communist or claim to have achieved communism: they referred to themselves as socialist states that are in the process of constructing socialism.[11][12][13][14] Terms used by communist states include national-democratic, people's democratic, socialist-oriented and workers and peasants' states.[15] Some economists and intellectuals argue that, in practice, the model under which these nominally communist states operated was in fact a form of state capitalism[16][17][18] or a non-planned administrative or command economy[19][20] and not an actual communist economic model in accordance with most accepted definitions of “communism” as an economic theory." 

From Wikipedia 

"Marxism is a method of socioeconomic analysis that uses a materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism, to understand class relations and social conflict as well as a dialectical perspective to view social transformation. It originates from the works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought, there is currently no single definitive Marxist theory.[1]

Some Marxist schools of thought place greater emphasis on certain aspects of classical Marxism while rejecting or modifying other aspects. Some schools have sought to combine Marxian concepts and non-Marxian concepts which has then led to contradictory conclusions.[2] It has been argued that there is a movement toward the recognition of historical and dialectical materialism as the fundamental conceptions of all Marxist schools of thought.[3] This view is rejected by some post-Marxists such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe, who claim that history is not only determined by the mode of production, but also by consciousness and will.[4]

Marxism has had a profound impact on global academia, having influenced many fields, including anthropology,[5][6] archaeology, art theory, criminology, cultural studies, economics, education, ethics, film theory, geography, historiography, literary criticism, media studies,[7][8] philosophy, political science, psychology, science studies,[9] sociology, urban planning and theater." 

From Wikipedia 

"Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party, as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness (education and organisation) and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism in the Russian Empire (1721–1917).[1] Leninist revolutionary leadership is based upon The Communist Manifesto (1848) identifying the communist party as "the most advanced and resolute section of the working class parties of every country; that section which pushes forward all others." As the vanguard party, the Bolsheviks viewed history through the theoretical framework of dialectical materialism, which sanctioned political commitment to the successful overthrow of capitalism, and then to instituting socialism; and, as the revolutionary national government, to realize the socio-economic transition by all means.[2]

In the aftermath of the October Revolution (1917), Leninism was the dominant version of Marxism in Russia and the basis of Soviet Democracy, the rule of directly elected soviets. In establishing the socialist mode of production in Bolshevik Russia—with the Decree on Land (1917), war communism (1918–1921), and the New Economic Policy (1921–1928)—the revolutionary régime suppressed most political opposition, including Marxists who opposed Lenin's actions, the anarchists and the Mensheviks, factions of the Socialist Revolutionary Party and the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries.[3] The Russian Civil War (1917–1922), which included the seventeen-army Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War (1917–1925), and left-wing uprisings against the Bolsheviks (1918–1924) were the external and internal wars which transformed Bolshevik Russia into the Russian Socialist Federative Soviet Republic (RSFSR), the core republic of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).[4]

As revolutionary praxis, Leninism originally was neither a proper philosophy nor a discrete political theory. Leninism comprises politico-economic developments of orthodox Marxism and Lenin's interpretations of Marxism, which function as a pragmatic synthesis for practical application to the actual conditions (political, social, economic) of the post-emancipation agrarian society of Imperial Russia in the early 20th century.[1] As a political-science term, Lenin's theory of proletarian revolution entered common usage at the fifth congress of the Communist International (1924), when Grigory Zinoviev applied the term Leninism to denote "vanguard-party revolution."[1] The term Leninism was accepted as part of CPSU's vocabulary and doctrine around 1922, and in January 1923, despite objections from Lenin, it entered the public vocabulary." 

From Wikipedia 

Amiri Baraka makes the classic leftist-socialist argument that Communist states really aren't Communist states and what's practiced in those countries really isn't communism. That the Soviet Union of Russia really wasn't a Communist State and I guess the People's Republic of China really isn't a Communist State today either. Well, there' partially right about the PRC because a lot of the Chinese economy is now in private hands and the Chinese are somewhat free to move about their own country and even travel to other countries and oversees. 

But if you look at how communism is practiced in the 20th Century and is still practiced today like in the Communist Republic of Korea and in the Castro Republic of Cuba, at the very least the Leninist (named after Russian Communist leader Vladimir Lenin) version of communism is the Communist philosophy that was practiced in the 20th Century and in some cases still practiced today, where the state (meaning the national government) owns and operates the entire country. And the people are really just there to serve the national government. And the more valuable they are the state, the better lives that they'll have in that country.

What Amiri Baraka was talking about in this Russia Today interview was democratic socialism. Which is socialist state and economy, but where the leaders are democratically elected and where the people are free to live their own lives. Which isn't much different from the social democracies of Canada and Europe, but at least according to this interview Mr. Barack seems even to left of those social democracies and talking about nationalization of current American private industries.