Russia Today: Thom Hartmann: 'Will President Obama Get Citizenship Pathway For Immigrants?'

Source:Russia Today host Thom Hartmann from back in the day.

"Jim Javinsky in for Thom Hartmann here – on the news…

You need to know this. A rare word is coming out of the Senate today: “compromise.” With President Obama set to tackle immigration reform on Tuesday, a bipartisan group of Senators came out today with their own compromised deal. The team of four Democrats and four Republicans introduced a plan that will put the more than 11 million undocumented immigrants, currently in the United States, on a path to citizenship. But first, they will have to register with the government, pass background checks, pay back taxes and penalties, and then move to the back of the line for full citizenship status. The proposal also puts in place new border security measures – and young people – or “DREAMers” who were brought to the country illegally when they were a child, but have gone to school here and kept their nose clean, will be put on a faster track toward citizenship. This is a good sign that a deal on comprehensive immigration reform can be struck this year. Stay tuned.

In screwed news..the banking sector is ruled by monopolies. New data from the Dallas Federal Reserve shows that a small group of “mega banks” control upwards of 70% of all banking assets. Just twelve banks, out of the total 56-hundred commercial banks in operation across the nation – have assets between $250 billion and $2.3 trillion dollars. They represent only point- 2% of all banks in operation, yet they account for 69% of the industry’s total assets. This is the definition of “Too Big to Fail.” In fact, as Senator Sherrod Brown has pointed out, these banks aren’t just too big to fail, “they’re too big to manage.”

As state senators in Virginia contemplate taking up legislation, to rig the Electoral College for the benefit of Republicans, lawmakers in Michigan are considering doing the same exact thing. Last Friday, Michigan’s Republican House Speaker, Jase Bolger, was quoted as saying, “I hear more and more from our citizens in various parts of the state of Michigan, that they don’t feel like their vote for president counts because another area of the state may dominate that, or could sway their vote…They feel closer to voting for their congressman or their congresswoman, and if that vote coincided with their vote for president they would feel better about that.” Michigan is one of the bluer states taken over by Republicans in 2010 – and if Republicans succeed in rigging the Electoral College there, then that would seriously hurt Democrats’ chances of taking the White House in the future. In fact, if all states took up this election rigging scheme last year – then Mitt Romney would be our president today.

Last Friday, the so-called pro-life movement marched in Washington, DC, to take away a woman’s right to make a choice about her body. And while they got all the media attention, a different kind of pro-life movement arrived in Washington, DC over the weekend. Thousands of protestors flocked to the nation’s capital, calling for national gun control legislation. The march was organized after the Newtown massacre – and more than 100 residents of the Connecticut town joined in, to demand a ban on military style assault weapons and high capacity ammo magazines. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who introduced an assault weapons ban last week, appeared on CNN on Sunday claiming that she does have the support for such a ban – and that she’s been promised by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that it will receive an up-or-down vote on the floor of the Senate.

The NYPD’s controversial stop-and-frisk policy may have recently been ruled unconstitutional, but that doesn’t bother New York police, who are set to unveil a new type of technology that makes stop-and-frisk unnecessary. NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly announced over the weekend, that within the year, his police force will begin using what are called Tera-Hertz scanners – or T-Ray machines – that can see through people’s clothing, to determine if they are carrying any weapons. As Raw Story reports, “The new device utilizes T-rays, which pass through fabric and paper, but cannot pass through metals.” The NYPD plans to deploy the machines in police cruisers at first, but eventually hope they can get the technology into a small enough machine, that it can fit on an officer’s belt. Privacy activists cheered the decision by the TSA, to get rid of the porno scanners in our airports, but now the fight for privacy continues on the streets of the Big Apple.

Don’t touch our libraries! That’s what the American people are saying amid the age of austerity and privatization, as they watch their community libraries lose funding, and close their doors. A new survey by the Pew Research center, found that 91% of Americans felt that libraries are important to their community. Another 76% said that libraries are important to them personally – and to their family. Unfortunately, public libraries are often the victim of budget cuts on a local, state, and federal level. In fact, the coming sequestration included a $19 million cut to a federal program that provides extra funding for public libraries around the nation.

And finally…Sarah Palin is out at Fox so-called News. Last Friday, Real Clear Politics reported that Fox News has decided to part ways with the gubernatorial quitter turned political celebrity. Over the last three years, she was a paid contributor, earning roughly a million bucks a year. A study out of the University of Minnesota analyzed Palin’s appearances on the network, and concluded that between 2010 and 2012 – Palin spoke nearly 190,000 words on the network – meaning she was paid roughly $15.85 per word. And that includes some of the words that none of us have ever heard before, and don’t even appear in any English language dictionary." 

From TruthOut

FORA-TV: 'Debate: Are The Rich Taxed Enough in the United States?'

Source:FORA-TV- showing a debate about taxes to a convention of insomniacs.

"Intelligence Squared U.S. hosts a debate on whether the rich are taxed enough in the United States. How do we fix the economy? The U.S. government's budget deficit is nearing a trillion dollars for the fourth straight year and unemployment remains high. With the Bush-era tax cuts that are set to expire at the end of 2012, what is the best move for continued economic recovery? President Obama says we should raise taxes on those making more than $250,000 to reduce the deficit. Others say that the richest 1% already pay more than a quarter of all federal taxes and higher taxes for job creators would slow economic growth. Are the nation's wealthiest not paying their "fair share," or should tax breaks be extended for everyone in the name of job creation? For the Motion: Glenn Hubbard and Arthur Laffer. Against the Motion: Robert Reich and Mark Zandi." 

From FORA-TV

Are the rich taxed enough? This is an interesting question because answering is like trying to prove a negative. Everything is relative, perhaps especially with tax policy. It's about what type of government you have, what type of population you, where the people are ideologically, what the people want the government, especially the nationally government to try to do for them. All these factors answer the question are the rich, or anyone else in the country, taxed enough, too much, or not enough.

The Real News: 'Breaking Up The Big Banks is Not a Solution'

Source:The Real News Network with a look at the American private banking industry.

"Leo Panitch: Global capitalism needs massive banks, but big private banks have the power to prevent regulation and threaten more crisis; the solution is not breaking them up but making them public." 

From The Real News Network

Paul Jay and Leo Paitich are literally talking about nationalizing the American banking industry. They're arguing that the only way to save the banking industry, is to make them part of the U.S. Government, owned by the U.S. Government. 

You think private big banks are too big to fail now, make them part of the U.S. Government. Right now every Federal agency that Americans have to have for their lives to be as good and as secure are possible, whether it's defense or the regulatory state, is too big to fail. 

The Socialist answer to every problem not just in America, but the rest of the world, is always a bigger government, especially a bigger national government.

The Young Turks: 'Soda Ban - Kills Minority Businesses?'

Source:The Young Turks with a look at soba prohibition in Michael Bloomberg's Nanny City.

"New York City's attempt to keep people from fattening up on sugary soft drinks, by banning some of them, would disproportionately hurt small, minority-owned businesses, according to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation.

The two groups have filed a joint brief supporting a lawsuit by the American Beverage Association in which they say New York's unelected Board of Health overstepped its power in approving the ban the sale of sugary drinks bigger than 16 ounces in certain city venues."*

The NYC soda ban was designed to improve public health, but now minority business groups say they'll be the ones losing on the plan. John Iadarola (TYT University), Desi Doyen (The Green News Report) and Lissette Padilla (TheLip.TV) discuss. " 

From The Young Turks

Imagine if soda bans, junk food bans, and somehow the radical hippie-left in America, literally took over America as part of some type of Communist revolution or something (I'm having fun with this) and big government banned meat as well. Think about all the people who would be in jail, for drinking a soda, eating a bag of potato chips, (but hopefully not the bag as well) or a cheeseburger, fried chicken, whatever it might be, could you imagine how much fun political cartoonists would have with that? 

I could see the videos and cartoons with captions now of law enforcement officers telling soda, junk food, and meat suspects with their guns pointed at them: "Put the soda down now! Don't take another sip. I'm warning you, buddy. Don't eat another chip or take another bite, or we'll stuff vegetables and pour water down your throat." 

If this would ever become national policy, (and Seattle ever ran out of coffee on the same day) we would create millions of prions inmates, out of soda drinkers and junk food eaters.

Jack Hammond: 'Students For a Democratic Society- To Change The World'

Source:Jack Hammond- welcome back to black & white America.

Source:The Daily Journal

“Here is a video I made for a Vietnam project in my history class.” 

From Jack Hammond

I actually believe as a current affairs blogger that todays Occupy Wall Street movement was born in the 1960s as part of what was called the New-Left. Because if you look at where Students For a Democratic Society were for back then and what they are trying to accomplish then and today, the end of war and that basically means all war, this movement is exactly what a person whose called a dove looks like and is.

A dove is someone who tends to take a soft approach when it comes to areas like national security and foreign policy, law enforcement, areas where government sometimes involves itself in the personal lives of individuals.

Doves were around pre-1965, but they really came alive in the 1960s with the Baby Boom Generation. And some of their kids today that is part of the New-Left who actually grew up, are part of the Occupy Wall Street movement today that’s again anti-war period. But also believes in things that Social Democrats call social justice: creating an economic system that of course is government based that would work to see that there’s economic equality throughout the country. That no one has too much and no one has too little.

The reason why the Democratic Party even has a left-wing today (or what others call Far-Left) is because of the New-Left (Socialists and Communists of the 1960s and 70s) because pre-1965 or so, the Democratic Party was made up of Center-Left Progressives, as well as Center-Right Conservatives, and even Far-Left Neo-Confederates in the South. But there weren’t Socialists in the Democratic Party for the most part back then. The New-Left changed that in the late 1960s and going into the 1970s. 

Mr. Holt History: Martin Luther King Jr.- 'On Love and Nonviolence'

Source:Mr. Holt History- Dr. Martin L. King talking about nonviolence, probably in the 1960s.

Source:The Daily Journal 

“In this clip, Dr. King describes the inter-relationship between love and nonviolence in his theology and practices.”

From Mr Holt History

I can’t tell you where this interview is from and exactly when it did happen, but only because the person who uploaded this video from where this photo is from didn’t bother to lay that out. But Dr. King was talking about Birmingham and Montgomery, Alabama, so I’m thinking it was from the 1960s.

Source:Mr. Holt History- Dr. Martin L. King talking about nonviolence, probably in the 1960s.

There were at least two reasons for Dr. King’s message of non-violence:

One, that he actually believed in it. And I’m not trying to suggest that he didn’t, but the other had a political component to it. He knew that for him and his movement to accomplish what it wanted which was equality and civil rights for all Americans, that he needed more than just African-Americans behind him, that he needed Americans of other races because he was facing a simple numbers game.

African-Americans at least to this point were a relatively small minority. And that they couldn’t go up against even just Anglo-Saxon Southerners who had most of the power down South, on their own. And that he also need positive media attention and not look like violent radicals, or anarchists. But serious intelligent people who had a message for the entire country and that they needed their support. Which is how he was able to bring in so many non-African Americans to his movement.

I’m not trying to say that Dr. King was a true pacifist and that if America was under attack from another country, that it shouldn’t fight back and that would be just one example. But he did have a pacifist approach when it came to the civil rights movement. He directed his people and marchers to simply just take it (for lack of a better phrase) put up with the violence which help get out the message of what his movement was facing from the Anglo-Saxon racist establishment in America. Especially from the South. That way to fight back was to show the opposition for what they really were. Which were radical violent racists and win legal and policy battles. 

Salon: John P. Rollert: What Barack Obama Should Say in His Second Inaugural

Source:Salon Magazine- President Barack H. Obama (Democrat, Illinois) 44th President of the United States.

"An inaugural address finds presidents at their most philosophical. Policy prescriptions are neither expected nor desired, and the solemnity of the occasion lends itself to reflection.

But a second inaugural address differs from the first in one important way, for it must respond to recent history. A newly installed president, without any real responsibility for the larger events that saw his election, can indulge in hopeful prophecy, but a re-elected president owns the immediate past. It, and not his address, is prologue to a second term, and so, especially in troubled times, his speech must take shape around present challenges.

The financial crisis cast a long shadow over President Obama’s first term.  Yet in his battle to deliver the economy from a steep financial downturn, he stumbled into a war of sorts over how capitalism works. This is a conflict the president would no doubt have rather avoided—the presidency is challenging enough without having to convince a substantial portion of the electorate that your aim is not to subvert capitalism but to save it from itself. However, the deep disagreement over how the crisis came about, much less how it might be resolved, made an ideological debate over the very nature of capitalism all but unavoidable.

What exactly is the nub of the disagreement? During the election, everything Republicans believed to be wrong with the president’s approach to economic policy was epitomized by the “You didn’t build that” remark. The remark came amid off-the-cuff comments President Obama made at a campaign rally in July. A first-time listener might be forgiven for mistaking the endlessly disputed that, but a review of the transcript clearly shows it refers to public infrastructure—roads, bridges, educational institutions, and the like—that is necessary, if not sufficient, for a private enterprise to thrive.

At the time, some Republicans tried to twist the remark to suggest that Obama believed that business owners don’t actually have a hand in building their own businesses, a contention that was not implausible so much as incoherent. However, shrewder observers insisted that the significance of the remark lay beyond its plain meaning. “It’s an explanation,” Paul Ryan declared in a campaign stop at the site of the remark. “It tells us why our economy is not growing like it should. It tells us the mindset that he’s using to lead our government. It tells us that he believes in a government-centered society and a government-driven economy.” For Ryan and others, it suggested that President Obama rejected the “job creators” vision of economic development favored by Republicans, or what one might call the Visible Hand theory of capitalism.

This theory finds its first and most formidable expression in the work of Joseph Schumpeter, the mid-20th century Austrian economist who cast the entrepreneur as the action hero of economic growth. As far back as Adam Smith, economists had regarded the serene stasis of perfect competition as a kind of endpoint for capitalism. But Schumpeter believed this ideal blinded them not only to the chaotic reality of capitalism but to the revolutionary power of instability to pull or, more accurately, yank an economy ahead.

“Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil,” he declared in his classic work Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. The system “is incessantly being revolutionized from within by new enterprise, i.e., by the intrusion of new commodities or new methods of production or new commercial opportunities into the industrial structure.” The people who fomented such destabilizing changes were Schumpeter’s entrepreneurs. Their efforts constituted a “distinct economic function,” one that gave rise to new possibilities in the capitalist order even as they foreclosed old ones.

Especially in Schumpeter’s early writings, the entrepreneurial class embodies the Visible Hand of capitalism. In his first book, The Theory of Economic Development, Schumpeter celebrates the entrepreneur as a “man of action,” a larger than life individual whose keen intellect, swashbuckling spirit, and stubborn irreverence toward the commercial status quo made his activity “the greatest and most splendid element that economic life offers to the observer.”

But though he never yielded pride of place in Schumpeter’s system, the entrepreneur evolved from a class of superman, distinct and identifiable, to a spirit of sorts that animated capitalism. That evolution is captured by the very way in which Schumpeter emphasized the impact of the entrepreneur. Early on he terms it “creative construction” before changing to the always-capitalized “Creative Destruction,” a subtle revision that prized the secondary consequences of entrepreneurial endeavors over their self-conscious aims.

The shift in emphasis coincided with a greater awareness by Schumpeter of what he called the “cultural performance” of capitalism, its tendency to subvert traditional ways of life and undermine social cohesion. “[O]ne may care less for the efficiency of the capitalist process in producing economic and cultural values,” he candidly admitted, “than for the kind of human beings that it turns out and then leaves to their own devices, free to a make a mess of their lives.”

Ayn Rand’s radical individualism made her the natural person to adopt Schumpeter’s vision and relieve it of its social qualms. Though she never acknowledged her debt to Schumpeter, Rand also locates the engine of capitalism in an “exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements.”

This passage comes from What Is Capitalism?, an essay published in 1965, 15 years after Schumpeter’s death. In it, Rand provides an eye-opening description of the just deserts implied by her vision of capitalism:

The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.

In other words, to the victors can’t go spoils enough.

Rand’s ethics of achievement, together with Schumpeter’s opinion of the essential place of the entrepreneur, provide the Visible Hand its moral license and theoretical integrity. In the 2012 campaign, it found an impassioned spokesman in Paul Ryan, whose speech at the Republican National Convention was a celebration of this vision. “With tax fairness and regulatory reform,” he pledged, “we'll put government back on the side of the men and women who create jobs, and the men and women who need jobs.”

Yet even among those sympathetic to the Republican ticket, the unavoidable elitism of the Visible Hand left some feeling cold. “In Ryan’s intellectual bubble, there are job creators and entrepreneurs on one side and parasites on the other,” wrote Scott Galupo of The American Conservative the morning after Ryan’s speech. “There is no account of the vast gray expanse of janitors, waitresses, hotel front-desk clerks, nurses, highway maintenance workers, airport baggage handlers and taxi-drivers. They work hard, but at the end of the day, what can they be said to have ‘built’?”

The answer, of course, is nothing—at least nothing essential to economic development. What so struck Adam Smith about the commercial system he described, “the assistance and co-operation of many thousands,” is entirely taken for granted. The daily labors of a nation are a mere fait accompli to the executive decisions of a few.

Such a vision sits uncomfortably amid democratic values of equality, empathy, and the inherent dignity of the individual, but it becomes intolerable when the theory underpinning it becomes a pretense for naked privilege. Whatever the merits of Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurship, his “job creators” were a class defined by spirit, not tax status. To the degree that Republicans conflate the two, they make a travesty of Visible Hand.

An aristocracy of talents is no doubt preferable to the politics of plutocracy, but neither one is commensurate with a vision of capitalism that takes as its point of departure, and its final destination, a concern for the common good. President Obama recognizes this. “Ever since” the financial crisis began, he said in his most powerful speech of the 2012 campaign, “there has been a raging debate over the best way to restore growth and prosperity; balance and fairness.” This isn’t “just another political debate,” he continued. “This is the defining issue of our time.”

And it will only continue to be, what with the upcoming battles over the sequester and the debt ceiling in addition to ongoing debates over entitlement reform, budget deficits, and tax rates. President Obama’s second inaugural address provides him a unique opportunity to describe the challenges of a common capitalism and to put forward a vision of economic development that doesn’t see us waiting on the deliverance of an enlightened few, but one in which there is dignity and place for everyone to lend a hand. 

From Salon Magazine